How not to break the news

Remember back in February when I told you about the Christmas gifts I made for my family last year? You probably thought February was late to be talking about Christmas gifts, but I guess June is really late. But I want to show you something.

This is the tin I decorated for my Dad's magnetic word kit.


See, it was filled with little magnets.


I even left him a note on the inside of the lid.


And I packaged it carefully so the magnets wouldn't shift around during transit. This was very important, because I also left a note for the whole family on the bottom of the tin underneath all of the other magnets.


There it is. Do you see it? Here, let me help.


I tested it several times to make sure the message would stay intact during shipping, but unfortunately I didn't count of someone in customs opening the package and taking everything out. So once it arrived, the message was no longer there. Just in case you ever want to make a big announcement with magnets that are going through international mail, here's some advise: glue the magnets in place.

Fortunately, I knew it was possible that the magnets wouldn't stay in place, so I had another cool way to make the announcement. Not as cool as the magnets, but still fun. I wrapped up a baby dress that I made and since we were opening gifts together over Skype I made sure everyone knew that this wasn't a gift from my family ("Oh, this one must be from Santa") so everyone was watching, then when I opened it I said, "This must be a gift for the baby we're adopting." Everyone was excited and my sister accused me of upstaging Christmas, or something like that. We repeated the whole baby dress announcement with Brian's parents a few hours later.

And so, that's the last time I'll blog about Christmas 2008.

Oh yeah, and can you believe it? Brian and I are ADOPTING A BABY!