Birthday!

We celebrated my youngest sister's 24th birthday this evening at my parents' house. We ate a lot, laughed until we couldn't and toasted Jacqui, wishing her the best. It was a blast. It was so good to see Jacqui and Jerrad whom I haven't seen since our vacation together in Wisconsin. Because that was such a special and spectacular trip, I wanted to incorporate it into Jacqui's gift this year. Remembering all the fun we had swimming, tubing, hiking and hanging out, I knew the options for inspiration were limitless. One event, however, stood out above all the rest. I touched briefly on it a few posts ago; The Geocaching Trip. This may sound innocent enough but it wasn't. We set out that afternoon with a weak signal on our cellphone's GPS. Thinking that this wouldn't be too problematic we followed Jacqui's suggestion of "taking the next thing that looks kind of like a trail." Convincing ourselves we were on the right path we climbed deeper and deeper into the woods spotting mushrooms and looking under every rock we came across for the geocache. After an hour or so of hiking we found the lake where it was most likely located. We spent the next minutes surveying the area for any place a small army box could hide. No luck! We weren't discouraged and continued searching until someone finally said it was time to give up. So the four of us started back in the direction we had arrived until we came upon a larger graveled road. Surely this wouldn't steer us off course... Fast forward 2 hours... We've finally found signs of life, a house and a real street, following the tire tracks out we headed west. After 2+ hours of searching we found a road we knew and headed home. Now, I don't mean to make this sound miserable, sure we didn't bring water, sure we saw lots of fresh bear and coyote scat, sure I was preparing to figure out shelter for the night BUT it was so much fun. We laughed most of the way and really had a fantastic adventure together.
Back to the gift... with this great journey still fresh in my memory the obvious gift choice was our own Faux Geocache. Using a shadowbox (I bought on sale from Hobby Lobby years ago. I like to keep things like this on hand for these types of situations...) anyway, using the shadowbox I cut out strips of forest themed craft paper to perfectly fit sides and front of the frame. It is important to line up your patterns and images to make the finished product look neat and professional. Naturally there will be one section that will not meet up but if you pay enough attention while you are placing your templates, you can make this seam almost unnoticeable.

After I had carefully attached these panels with craft glue, I set out to collect the items that would adorn the interior. Using carefully selected pea gravel that I use in my terrariums (I pick out the most perfect and beautiful stones when I wash a new bag of pebbles. OCD? Maybe but it saves so much time in the end) I used this as the "ground covering." In my hiking pack I keep a fairly large, old book for pressing flowers. I am always picking and pressing flowers year round and find it extremely helpful to always have a book on hand while out in the woods. On the geocaching hunt I managed to pick several flowers and pulled a few out and set them in a base of hot glue. I also pressed ferns from one of the houseplants between regular computer papers with my iron set on high/dry. When pressing with this technique it is important to constantly flip and switch out the paper so the moisture can evaporate quickly, reducing any oxidation. These were set next to a dried morel the same way as the pressed flowers. For the scroll I simply made 1 1/2" strips of computer paper, soaked them in a hot cup of tea to give them their weathered appearance, let dry and wrote on it. I then secured the curls of the scroll with hot glue and mounted it to the background. Overall this is an easy project but with all the extra thought and care, it was a truly personal and thoughtful gift... if I do say so myself. So the next time you're out with friends or just out doing something fun yourself, take pictures and keep little souvenirs because you too can make something special and heartfelt.