52 Things I Love About You- Deployment Countdown

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Here is one of my Christmas presents to my hubby. Since we celebrated Christmas early, I can safely post this. I spotted this project on pinterest a couple months ago and I thought it was the cutest idea. Then I started thinking... my hubby is going to be gone on his deployment for a year. 1 Year= 52 weeks. 52 cards in a deck. How perfect! So yeah, he missed the change over to 9 month deployments and that sucks BUT at least the year-long 52 weeks works perfectly for this little project. Gotta count the little positives!

But I put my own little spin on it. 

On the outside, it looks the same: 
I still printed out 52 reasons why I love my hubby. Some silly, some a little more serious, some I wouldn't post online ;).

And attached the little slips of paper with packing tap since we've got plenty of that laying around recently. NOTE: You MUST put packing tape or contact paper over the regular paper. Otherwise, the ink will get scratched off with the paint and won't be able to be read. 

Here is my #12:

But here's what I did differently. After reading this post on Oh the Lovely Things on how to do your own scratch-off lottery tickets, I decided to make each card a scratch-off ticket. Hubby gets to scratch off one card per week. 52 cards=52 weeks away

All you do is mix 2 parts silver paint (or whatever color you want) and 1 part dishsoap. This is my test card to make sure it would work. It did!

So I painted each card over, let it completely dry, and then did a second coat. Here are the results!


Didn't they turn out pretty cool looking?

Then I let them dry for a long time. Like all day before I put them together in a book. I really didn't want them to stick together. Then I punched the holes and got my binder rings from walmart. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

So now it's kind of like a little count-down. Of course, we don't know for sure that it's going to be exactly 52 weeks. But we know that he's not going to have a lot of internet service in the area he's going. So I told him that I'll at least be able to tell him I love him a different way each week, even if he doesn't get a letter from me that week. Now I just have to hope that he won't cheat and scratch them off before he's supposed to!

Happy Holidays!

-Amy

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 3, 2011 at 4:17 AM

    This is so cute! I had seen the scratch-off thing a while back on some wedding blogs, and thought it was cool. Seeing yours, I'm definitely going to have to make something using it.

    That stinks that there won't be internet where your husband is. People always ask me if my husband and I Skype, but the connection is so lousy and always cuts outs, so we never do.*

    ReplyDelete
  2. BekahDecember 3, 2011 at 9:41 AM

    Awesome idea!!! I bet James was pumped :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 5, 2011 at 2:47 PM

    This is such a great idea! He will love it for sure -- and it will give him something to look forward to everyday!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Clemence - Oh The Lovely ThingsDecember 6, 2011 at 6:25 AM

    How lovely!

    ReplyDelete

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