For The Man Who Has EVERYTHING...

My Pinspiration

There are few men in my life that are very special to me, and my Father-In-Law is one of them. This year, my FIL (as I like to refer to him) celebrated a MILESTONE...His 70th Birthday! Now, my FIL is quite difficult to buy for. He doesn't provide a list...and he usually buys whatever he wants whenever he wants, so sometimes it's a stretch to find him that perfect gift. As I was trolling Pinterest one day, I came across the above pin and it enticed me to take a further look. A woman, for her father's 70th birthday (yes...I'm liking it...), sent a postcard to 70 of her father's closest friends and family members and once they were mailed back, gave them to her father as a gift.

Sounded perfect to me. Not everyone has 70 different friends to send postcards to, and I imagine for the average Joe, this would potentially be a difficult gift to put together. Maybe for a 40th or 50th...something a little more feasible. My FIL, however, has a hundred million buhzillion friends and it was going to be a chore to narrow down which ones we were going to send them to.

Anyway, I ran it by my husband, who agreed that it would be an awesome gift...something sentimental that could be more of a keepsake rather than a practical present, which is generally what FIL gets. But it wasn't going to be an easy one to pull off. Firstly, I had to put my amateur photoshop skills to use and create a postcard that we could send out. The original pin's postcards were absolutely awesome. I loved the wording, I loved the idea, I loved everything about it...SO I COPIED IT WORD FOR WORD! (blatant ripping off is the sincerest form of flattery, right?) And, as the original pinner included, we added a intro/instruction card, just giving the recipient an idea as to what this was for and what they were supposed to do with it.

The instruction/Intro insert

And the postcard itself was created as just that. The picture side of each postcard was going to be assigned a number (1 through 70, of course) and the postcard side had our address c/o the birthday boy and a space for each recipient to put their memory. And then halfway through, I realized that numbering the postcards was going to paint me in a corner. What happens if, for some reason, I needed to rearrange the cards? The numbers wouldn't allow me to do that. So what I ended up doing was penciling in a number/letter on the front of the postcard. My OCD, took over, and I created an Excel spreadsheet of each number/letter and who it was assigned to so that I could keep track. I'm thankful I did this because I found that as postcards were mailed back, some people only put first names, or didn't sign them at all, so it was still great to know who they were actually from. Finally, each postcard was stamped so that the RSVP'er didn't have to worry about anything other than filling this little guy out.

Photo/Number Side

Postcard side

Now what we needed was a list of my FIL's favourite people to send to and we were off to the races. My Mother-In-Law (MIL, of course), wonderful as she is, provided me with a fantastic list of addresses for friends and family members, and we set to work.

 

As the "return to" date approached I started getting a bit nervous. Only 20 responses had arrived...that's not a great percentage...So I prepared myself for the worst and begged my poor MIL to hand over some photos that I could use as fillers...just in case. But, of course, at the last minute (and when I say at the last minute, I truly mean it - we received our last one at 9pm the night before FIL's birthday party...EEEEEK!) almost all of the postcards arrived! Phew!

I added numbers to my blank fronted postcards, as well as my photo fillers, each on their own numbered page, to keep with the theme and I added a little table of contents at the end so that dear ol' FIL could see all those who participated.

So, now that I had all the responses...what was I going to do next??? I wanted it to be presented in a book format, but I wasn't sure of the best way to put it together. Initially I was going to just hole punch the cards and link them together with a binding circle...but that just seemed like a mediocre way to present something so meaningful...SO, I had to go full bore. Which meant actually creating a properly bound book. Now, that sounds all fine and dandy...but let's remember the time constraint I'm working under...It's 9pm the night before the birthday party. I can't exactly send it out to Kinkos and have it spiral bound and ready for the next afternoon, could I? Nope...so back to Pinterest I went, praying to the higher powers that I would find an easy way to bind a book and make it look somewhat presentable. I came across several pins about binding books by sewing the paper together and that seemed like a fantastic idea BUT...I didn't leave enough room in the margins to allow space for the stitching and still keep all the memories on the postcards legible. Back to the drawing board. After scouring Pinterest forever, I used the old, forgotten and perhaps even archaic method otherwise known as Google...Yes, friends...I went against all things natural in the world of Pinterest (keep it on the downlow or my membership may be revoked!!!!)

but, lo and behold, I found something that sounded like it would work!

DIY Bookbinding Tutorial...um, duh! It even came with its own YouTube video!!!!!!! Awesome! So, I followed all the details, grabbed my materials and started this super easy, but extremely time consuming method of getting all the pages to meld together.

Materials photo from diybookbinding.com

Simple Simon! Clamp all the pages together using the clips and the paint sticks and put thin layer after thin layer of glue as your binding agent. The time consuming part is waiting for the glue to dry before adding the next coat. Yes, ladies and gents...I went all out this time, set my laziness aside and waited the full 30 minutes between coats to make sure this sucker wasn't going to budge. At the end of the day, there were 5 coats of super glue keeping these postcards together. At the end of the process, it almost looked like a note pad. Perfect. I even tried out hanging the weight of the book by one page to make sure it didn't rip apart and (THANK GOD!) it remained intact.

Now that the inside of the book was finished, I needed to work on the outside of the book. You know the old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover"...well, the actuality is, is that EVERYONE judges a book by its cover, and this was going to be no exception. If I was going to make this a gift to remember, I needed to make it look like one.

I grabbed an old cardboard backing from my pad of construction paper, cut three pieces, two for the front and back cover and one for the spine. I then spray-adhesived those pieces to some awesome Value Village fabric (you knew VV was going to make an appearance in this post, didn't you???) and the outside cover was born. I then glued a little piece of canvas onto the spine of the book and then glued the book onto the inside spine of the cover, and I was started to see the bigger picture. It was actually looking pretty stinkin' good!

Then I found some semi-masculine paper to create an inner lining and I was FINITO!

The finished product!

Now, if I were to ever do this project again, what would I do differently? When I was initially planning this book out, I figured that over the summer, people would be vacationing/cottaging/away. I thought that giving everyone a long RSVP time would be better. Frankly, this backfired, as most people saw the return by date and set it aside (a.k.a. lost it),  and I ended up sending countless email reminders, which was silly. I think I would also include photos (which this time were a filler, rather than an enhancer), especially for family and really close friends. But all in all, I feel like it came together pretty well.


And how was the gift received? Well, let's put it this way. The gift was opened, and the first page was read. Then the book was closed. Then the tears came. My FIL sat both my husband and I down at the end of his party and we made him read all the messages from those who were in attendance, and more tears were shed. He then took the book on his annual trip to Florida to really give the book a read. I truly hope the book made his day. As the responses arrived at my house, it was clear to me that this special man of mine had touched so many people's lives in countless ways, and I was lucky to have him in my own life. In my heart of hearts, I know that this gift will be a treasured one. Love you Papa!

Shout Outs

Inchmark for giving me this wonderful idea and making me look like a superstar daughter-in-law. Please check out this blog and give it the props it deserves!

DIY Bookbinding for giving me the means to present this um...present...lol.

To all those who sent in their response postcards. You truly made this gift a memorable one. Thanks for taking the time to fill out and send us your amazing memories! Here's to another 70! xox