Secret is out...

The other day in my Dear... post, I did a Dear Self comment. Some of my readers thought the secret was that I was PREGNANT! Hahahahahahahahaha! No, that is NOT the secret. The secret was that I made a gift for a friend, and I was excited to show it to her. Thankfully I didn't have to wait as long as I had originally thought.

If you've been following my blog, or know me in real life, you know of my friends Cindy & Dan, and their son Elliott, who sadly passed away back in April. Elliott suffered from cancer for many years, and the complications from it called him to heaven. Dan & Cindy have been having a rough time, for obvious reasons. This time of year is especially hard. First Thanksgiving, First Birthday, and First Christmas without Elliott. I wanted to do something special for them, to try to cheer them up a little bit. Since money is tight, I needed to be creative in an inexpensive way...

One night I was in bed, trying to sleep, when the idea came to me. I wanted to see if some of Elliott's friends would be willing to come take pictures at the forest preserve, and help me with my plan. We met on a chilly Sunday morning, there was my girls, Mrs. W. (Elliott's former tutor), Caitlyn & Emily (Mrs. W.'s daughters), and Stephen who is Elliott's best friend. I had the kids use their bodies to spell out E L L I O T T, and took pictures. We also took many candid pictures. We even had fun while doing it!

It felt like Elliott was watching the action that day. We set our coats on a picnic table, and on the table right in front of us said, "I LOVE CINDY" How cool was that? Maybe it was a sign of him being there.

Later I ordered prints, got frames, and loaded up the pictures. It turned out pretty well I think. I was going to give the pictures to Dan & Cindy at Elliott's birthday celebration in December, but since not everyone that participated in the pictures was going to be there, we decided to give it to them last night. I wrote a little poem to go along with it too.


I think it is safe to say, the gift was loved. I'm so happy. I hope the tears of happiness last night were a much needed break from tears of sadness.

I'll share a few pictures with you, my friends. I hope you enjoy them.










What do you think? I think they turned out great! I should have done the L's a little different, lined the kids up over top of each other more, so they lines didn't look so long...but other than that I like it all.

QOTD: Has anyone ever made you a special heartfelt gift before?

Toodles!