hey y’all! i hope everyone is having a wonderful day! i cannot tell you how long i have been waiting to blog about this post. i have had it all planned out (pictures and everything), but i couldn’t talk about it until valentine’s day. why? because this post is about a gift i made for my boyfriend, justin.

being that we are both tight on money at the moment (he’s a broke college kid and i’m a broke graduate paying off my student loans) we decided to be creative with our gifts to each other. now, i’m not that big of a fan of valentine’s day. it’s lame to put all this pressure on people to shower their loved ones with gifts and if they don’t follow through, it means they don’t love them that much. LAME! you should show love to the people in your life EVERY DAY! for the past two valentine’s days, we have been very creative with our gifts. we don’t focus on the cost, but the meaning behind it. i hope it stays that way! 🙂

this year, justin surprised me with a photo shoot. i LOVE having pictures. being that i’m normally behind the camera, there aren’t a lot of pictures of us together. he arranged for my friend lindsey to take pictures of us in our cool outfits and pretend to be models for the day. i will definitely be posting pics of this later! 😉

my gift to him was also very personal to us. see, we have a thing for puzzle pieces. i can’t really remember exactly how it started, but it has always been our thing. i think it had something to do with an episode of sabrina the teenage witch. it was the episode where she was supposed to get married. being that she was a witch, there was a way to tell if the one she was marrying was her true love. turns out, everyone has a piece that fits up perfectly with their soul mate. unfortunately, her groom’s piece didn’t line up all the way with her’s. she ends up running out on her wedding and escaping on the back of harvey’s motorcycle. at the end of the show it shows her piece and his piece lining up perfectly. sorry if i lost anyone for a second, i used to love that show back in the day and still watch it now if it’s on the tv. haha. somehow justin and i started talking about that episode and, more or less, how we hoped that we’d find our puzzle piece. cheeeezzzzyyyy!!! *gags* i KNOW. forgive me for all the gushy stuff, but that is how we ended up liking puzzle pieces and that is why i incorporated them into my gift for him.

this gift was very affordable. here are the supplies i used:

i got 4 bottles of paint for $1 at michael’s. how cool is that?!

i borrowed the paint brush from my nana, so that was free! i love when you can use supplies from around the house. i love being resourceful!

the matte was from wal-mart for around $2.50, i think.

i bought this puzzle from dollar tree. dun dun DUN! it was $1. 🙂

i borrowed this glue fun from my mom! again, take advantage of things you have lying around your house.

after gathering all of my supplies, i sat down in front of a good tv show *coughlawandordersvucough* and crafted away.

i painted the puzzle pieces and let them dry overnight. note to others: do NOT leave them drying on a paper towel. i made that mistake and had the tedious job of removing all of the paper-towel bits stuck to the dried paint on the puzzle pieces. for the future i will let stuff dry on wax paper or something of that nature. yay for trial and error!

the next day i glued the majority of the puzzle pieces on the matte and viola! my present was complete!

here is the finished product!

the total cost was: around $5 plus the picture i’m printing to be framed!

happy valentine’s day, everyone! remember to show some love to the people in your life EVERY DAY, not just today! xoxo <3