Saturday, December 19, 2009

The book!

{Ashley gets creative with telling us how old Neil is - it looks better than thirty-five actual fingers, no?}


For Neil's 35th birthday, I had to get creative. We love living in Austin, but there are times when you want to be able to celebrate milestones with all your loved ones and it just isn't possible. This was one of those occasions, so I thought it would be fun to have friends and family alike help me out by contributing stories or well wishes for Neil's birthday.

I'll be honest, between working on our Christmas mail out this year, the tedious and demanding, yet full-of-fun playscape project and trying to wrangle out this project, all the while desperately trying to be unnoticed and under the radar so as not to ruin the surprise, it got a little complicated. It wasn't until I started putting the stories together with pictures that were sent, or locating and digging out Neil's yearbook to grab some photos that I really started to immerse myself into the project.

It didn't take long - a side benefit to having put together a *lot* of professional wedding books in my short year with Ron Parks while doing photography. In fact, having an idea of how to throw it together allowed me to focus on all the stories and envision the voices behind the stories. I kept grinning while working on it, because even though he had asked for a certain video game for his birthday, I just KNEW the book was going to be the real winner this year.

And it was.

{Again, here we do a set of three and five candles...can't be havin' the
fire department come by because of the bonfire...err, umm...the candlelight from the cake!}
{the cover - I cheated the other day and told him I needed a
recent pic for our Christmas mail out -he TOTALLY fell for it! ;-) }
{some birthday quotes from famous people...to set the tone}
{sorry Kevin, but there is just something about that picture! Still friends?}
{Neil gets a kick out of reading the stories}
{Here are a few stories from Chico, a friend from high school. He just moved back from South Africa and didn't have his yearbooks handy, so I did a little investigative work on my end and found some pics to use in the book.}

**This time of year has been quite hectic, so I apologize for the delay in getting this post up for you all to enjoy. I know many of you who contributed wanted to see the final project. I hope you enjoy it - if you'd like me to photograph and e-mail your specific page, let me know. I'm happy to accommodate. :)

2 comments:

Mary Ann Kreitzer said...

Can't wait to see it. I'm curious. Did Chico tell about the famous bumper sticker and sign debacle when I got called by the police to come down and get the kids after they tore up pro-abort Jim Moran's signs and stickers on Rebecca Drive? I scolded them but when Chico pulled a mangled bumper sticker out of his pocket I had to laugh. And it sure made driving down that street a lot more pleasant. I especially hated the sticker that read "Prayerfully pro- choice." As if God would tell anyone in prayer that murdering babies is an acceptable "choice."

confused homemaker said...

You've been tagged chica:) And I'm looking forward to getting the other project underway!!

http://theconfusedhomemaker.com/2010/01/06/tagging-me-in-seven/

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