Everything Under the Son

As you all have probably read, last week was my wedding anniversary. Seeing as it fell at the end of the month (I should have planned that better!), I needed something meaningful, yet cheap...and by cheap I mean free!

I had run across this cute idea last year, and it jumped into my head, so I ran with it!

I made a Deck of Love Cards! Check 'em out:





Here are the cast of characters...





One deck of old playing cards (I chose red)
Some paper
A pen or marker (if you hand-write your reasons)
A glue stick (oops, I left that out of the picture!)
A hole punch
Some curling ribbon
Scissors (to cut the curling ribbon)


Here we go....I first made up a list of 52 reasons why I love Nathaniel. Some of the reasons are funny like "I love you because you love chinese food!", and some of the reasons are more serious like "I love you because you love Natalie." You could certainly handwrite these on your paper, but I opted to use different fonts, and print them out on my computer. Either way is fine, just go with what you prefer.

Then, I cut the reasons into small rectangles that would fit on the cards. I used the glue stick to glue them on the cards, making sure you could still see the face value of the card. I'm not sure why that was important to me, but it was. It's not like we will ever actually play cards with this deck, but I still wanted to be able to see the face value of the cards anyway. Silly type-A me!






After I had attached all of the 52 Reasons, I then punched a hole in the top corner of every card, making sure to use my first card as a pattern. The cards won't lay as nicely on your ribbon if you don't have all the holes in the same spot!

After the 52 reasons were placed and the holes were punched, I used my curling ribbon to make a ring through the holes. You could use the small ring clips if you prefer, but I like the festive look of the curling ribbon, and again, I was going for free!

On the front of the first card, I used some scrapbook letters that I already had to put "I Luv U". It just added a little something I thought!



And...voila, a fun, meaningful, and basically free gift for my sweetie. He loved it by the way! The cool thing is, with 52 cards in a deck, he has the perfect number of cards to flip to a new one each week for a whole year...fancy math, yes? Of course he flipped through the entire deck right away, but he can keep it in his bedside table drawer and take a look anytime he wants to!

Even though I made this project for my anniversary, it would be perfect to make for Valentines Day, too! So get started, and if you make this project, email me pictures so I can see how yours turned out! Remember, you can make it your own. Had I had a bigger budget for this project, I probably would have embellished each card a bit more with fun stickers, and even pictures on the ones that talked about our kids or family! How fun to also put candy wrappers, or a fortune from a fortune cookie on the one that talks about chinese food.



Remember that the sky is the limit, so use your imagination and make it personal for your sweetie! Besides, it's NEVER a bad day to say I love you!!

What a SWEET idea! I love it... I may have to use that one :) Hope Natalie gets better soon.