A Birthday Gift and A Piece of Art

My husband's birthday is this weekend, and with my new and growing interest in Pinterest (that I was talking about here) I have found a bunch of really neat ideas to (eventually) try, including this awesome idea that I knew I needed to do immediately:

DIY Child's Handprint Tree PDF by PERSONALIZEDprints

I already had something in store for Father's Day but nothing for the upcoming birthday, so this was perfect: we'd make a hand tree and frame it for him.  We don't actually really do birthday or Christmas gifts anymore.  When we bought our house we figured, we just bought a house- what else can we give each other?  And really, if we need something we go buy it, and if we just want something, well, we hope someone else gives it to us for a gift because we're not likely to just run out and buy anymore.

So I didn't want to do this too far in advance, so today I got out some paint and decided to give it a try, hoping the toddler would listen to instructions.  Well, he very patiently let me paint his hand with a paintbrush (four times even!) and watched very it all very closely, and was very good to open his hand and leave it flat when I pressed it on the paper, which I was amazed at.

Project complete!  I added the tree and some grass and thought it was very cute.  And of course, as I was cleaning up, the toddler had grabbed the brush and was going to town on an extra piece of paper I had taken out (just in case), and he was having the best time so I just let him go for it.

While those we drying, we made a trip to Walmart for a frame, and I found an unused mat in my cross stitching mat bag (because, as you know, I'm not going to complete a cross stitch any time soon).  When the toddler went for a nap I got to work, putting the tree into the frame.  And I thought for a second, let's see how the "masterpiece" looks in the frame, just to see.

So much cooler!!  The tree didn't look nearly as good as this.  So we'll give dad the tree as is and then this one, which would look perfect in my husband's office.  Here's hoping he likes it as much as I do!

What's everyone else got going for Father's Day this year?