My parents celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary recently. To celebrate, we decided to take a family trip to Banff. But what to do for a present? What do people who have been married for 40 years need?
There were some great ideas online. Check out what Beth from Unskinny Boppy made for her parent’s 40th Anniversary. Very cool.
But I am a total klutz with a hammer and nails, and I wanted to keep my fingers unbroken (at least until our stone retaining build- see post later)! So I needed to find something else to do. My sister-in-law finally rescued us by finding a really great site online that does those photographs of objects that look like letters. So we had one of those made of their last name and matted and framed. Gorgeous.
I thought I also wanted to make them some origami cranes. My mom taught elementary school for 30 years, and she always buys the grandkids books. One she bought our son a while ago told the story of the 1000 paper cranes. A beautiful, sad story. At the end of the book, there are instructions on how to make origami cranes. Cranes mate for life and I thought it would be pretty to make a mobile of cranes for their living room. My original idea was just two cranes. Of course it turned into something much bigger. And trickier.
First of all, I had the hardest time trying to find origami paper. I could find all kinds that were in small squares, but I wanted them to be big! After a couple of months of fruitless searching, I decided to try scrap booking paper. It worked! So it began.
And since I had all sorts of pretty colours and patterns in the book of paper, I thought why not do one for our whole family?
After all of the cranes were made, the next step involved beads and fishing line. When doesn’t a craft involve beads and fishing line around here? They are like our duct tape.
Using a giant needle, I threaded beads onto the bottom and top of each crane.
Then we had to figure out a way to hang them up. I tried bamboo sticks, but that didn’t work at all. So we used a metal hoop (usually we use those to make dreamcatchers) and wrapped it with leather lacing.
We tied them on in various lengths for our little family groups- mom and dad first, then my 3, then my brother and his wife and girls.
The good news is that now I can fold an origami crane in less than two minutes. And using scrap booking paper, no less. Just think what I could do with real origami paper…
For the anniversary, we all went to Banff for the weekend. It was beautiful. We rented a family suite and the kids had so much fun swimming and playing. We barbecued one night and went out for a nice dinner and had cake the next. After we got back to the hotel from dinner, our son read them a poem that I wrote for them for their anniversary. My grandma started the tradition of writing poems for special occasions in our family. Milestone birthdays, house warmings, reunions. My aunt wrote one for us in the fall for our housewarming Thanksgiving dinner. So I wrote one for my wonderful parents on their anniversary. Here he is reading it.
He did such a good job!
Cake and then off to the water slides again! As we were driving out of Banff, both my son and my niece asked when we were going back. No kidding. Hopefully soon. Nothing like origami and poetry in the Rockies.
Then I made a paper wreath. There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to make this, so I won’t include instructions, but I will tell you that I used a paper plate for the backing and hot glued my taped cones onto it. The cones took a while to get the hang of, actually.
Stay tuned for the reveal!
Stone and Rose 