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Birthday Jeopardy (and the best gift ever)

Jessica Smith

I love birthdays. I can thank my mother for that. She always made our birthdays wonderful. They are one day a year you get to feel special, or make someone you love feel special. Yesterday was Brian’s birthday, so I came up with a fun way to give him the gifts I’d gotten him.

BIRTHDAY JEOPARDY!

Birthday Jeopardy

I made a full Jeopardy board (Brian loves that show & trivia games) and came up with 31 questions to go with it! I  did one round, plus final jeopardy. Each category had a gift associated with it. My favorite category was: Tina, you “fat” lard. All of the answers had the word “fat” in them. And yes, the next category was Come get some dinner.

Here’s an example:

Tina, you “fat” lard

Watching, thinking of, hearing about or listening to Game of Thrones makes Jess this 8-letter word for tired.

What is ‘fat’igued?

Ding ding ding! For that question, B got the newest Game of Thrones book.

The best category and corresponding gift was in final Jeopardy.

Golden Retrievers

Jess’ three golden retrievers were all named after movie characters. Name the three films.

What are The Land Before Time, Indiana Jones and Ratatouille. 

Buzzzz. B got this wrong (he didn’t know my first dog Sarah was named after Sarah the Triceratops in the Land Before Time. Rookie…. Also, Remmy isn’t really named after the rat in Ratatouille. But it worked so well for the clue!).

Since it was his birthday, he still got his gift.

Birthday Portrait

A custom portrait of Remmy!

So this is basically the best, most amazing, adorable gift ever. As a blogger a super small small smallllll business owner (really, I can’t even claim that.. but whatevs), I always love to share other fantastic small businesses. I bought this print from Kathryn Selbert Illustrations, who has a shop on Etsy. I sent her three pictures of our pup with a few details, and she made this graphic drawing, basically combining all three into one adorable cartoonified Rem. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. I ordered this for B on Nov. 4, originally planning to give this to him for Christmas. But she sent me the file on Sunday (you can opt to print your own or she’ll send you a print) and I had it printed just in time for his birthday! Talk about amazing timing.

Here are the photos I sent her:

PupPortraitPic1 PupPortraitPic2 PupPortraitPic3

Here’s the illustration she made:

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Is she talented or what?!? I love that she pulled in Rem’s bandana (which I think has since been destroyed) and that his big ol’ tongue is hanging out. I also love that it looks like a watercolor painting.

Let’s be honest, this was a gift for me just as much as it was a gift for Brian. We both love it. It’s definitely one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever given.

Kathryn has all sorts of other adorable illustrations available in her shop, so you should definitely check them out. She does two-week turnarounds, so there’s still plenty of time left to order your pet portraits before the holidays!

OK, I’m done raving now. Happy day-after-your-birthday to my main squeeze. Glad you liked your birthday game & gifts.

If you want to check out Brian’s other fun birthday “game,” check out my post on his beer scavenger hunt!

 

Craft Projects

Patriotic Cornhole Boards

Jessica Smith

Cornhole3

My step dad is super handy (the understatement of the year) and built my little sister a set of cornhole boards last year. He painted them white so she could spruce them up with a design of her own. Last weekend she came over to paint them — they turned out awesome! (Sorry — No tutorial on the actual boards in this post since I wasn’t a part of the construction.)

Emily used paint from Michaels for her boards. She taped off her stripes and drew on her stars before painting each board. She even painted around each star by hand, which I thought was super impressive. DISCLAIMER: Only one star was harmed (read: painted over) in the creation of these boards.

Two coats on each, and she was d-o-n-e done! The are so cute, don’t ya think?

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The only thing cuter than her patriotic boards (and my garden behind them) is Em!

Cornhole1I guess craftiness runs in the family 🙂

We will be using these boards at our Memorial Day picnic/Em’s birthday celebration this weekend!

Craft Projects

Chess set makeover

Jessica Smith

I started this project forever ago and just recently got around to finishing it. We have three chess sets, all of which belonged to Brian’s dad. Brian really loves the nicest set — all of the pieces are metal. The two other sets are really unique — one is all wood and plain-looking, and the other are these giant, ornate pieces that are chipped here and there.

I thought it would be fun to breathe new life into the plain wooden pieces, and what better way than to make them football themed.

Using a throw-away baking tin, I took one half of the chess pieces outside to spray paint Ravens purple.

Chess pieces

Two coats later, I had a vibrant half set of chess pieces to go along with the black pieces. IF you attempt to spray paint your own chess set, it would be a good idea to somehow tack them down before spraying them. Several of my pieces fell over from the spray paint, which scuffed up their paint job a bit.

chess

So that part… well, that was months ago. I finally got around to painting numbers onto each piece, starting with No. 52 — Ray Lewis.

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Each purple piece was painted with a number corresponding to an actual player’s jersey. Too fun!

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I think they turned out well. I’m not sure how often we’ll use the set since we have the other set Brian likes so much (that and we don’t often play chess)… but it sure is a little more exciting than the boring brown pieces.

chess

Happy Saturday!