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My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last week. I hadn’t won any
prizes for coming up with great anniversary gifts since our 20th anniversary
(when we took the children to a rock concert), but I do think this year I
really outdid myself with a brilliant gift idea. And I came up with this great
25th anniversary gift idea all by myself…or at least I found the idea
on the Internet all by myself.
Less than a month ago I came across a website called www.paintyourlife.com, an
interesting site that offers to create an original painting from any photograph
you send them. They showed a lot of samples and even offered to create an oil
painting from a composite of more than one photo. That got me thinking.
My wife and I have one album of photos of our three grandchildren (already
pretty much out of date) and hundreds more lost in our computer’s memory
where neither my wife no I can find them quickly enough to show the neighbors
when they ask how the kids are growing. My wife had complained on numerous
occasions about our lack of proper portraits of our precious grandchildren
who live several hundred miles away.
Well, I got to work searching our email and found the best recent photos of
our daughter’s twin girls and our son’s two year old boy and I sent them to
PaintYourLife and commissioned a group oil painting of the three kids. I
even ordered a frame in case it didn’t arrive in enough time for me to have
it framed before our anniversary. The oil painting was remarkably inexpensive;
almost too good to be true. And the cost of shipping was included.
Just to be on the safe side, I bought my wife a pair of pearl earrings,
gift wrapped them and put them away in my sock drawer.
Exactly in the amount of time promised by PaintYourLife I received by mail a
well-wrapped parcel which I managed to get past my wife without her noticing.
I inspected the painting when she wasn’t around and was delighted with the results.
It was all I could do to keep the portrait a secret until our 30th anniversary
dinner when all the children and grandchildren would be present.
Well, not only was my wife thrilled with the beautiful oil painting of our precious
grandchildren, but our children and the grandchildren were also absolutely surprised
and delighted. We will be enjoying this portrait for years to come…and it’s certainly
not going to be alone on the wall. (Maybe for our next anniversary we’ll try a pastel…)
Oh, and the pearl earrings will do just fine as a present for my
wife’s birthday next month.
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