Picture Frame Happy 5 year anniversary
Every year for our anniversary my wife and I do our best to get each other gifts that coincide with the traditional gifts for each year of marriage. We never really had a discussion about it but for the past 5 years we both have done our best to keep our gifts in line with the same types of gifts that have been given for generations before us. 
If you are unfamiliar with the list of traditional gifts I am referring to here they are:
- 1ST YEAR: Paper
- 2ND YEAR: Cotton
- 3RD YEAR: Leather
- 4TH YEAR: Fruit & Flowers, or Linen & Silk
- 5TH YEAR: Wood
- 6TH YEAR: Iron / Candy
- 7TH YEAR: Wool/ Copper
- 9TH YEAR: Pottery
- 10TH YEAR: Tin/ Aluminum
- 11TH YEAR: Steel
- 12TH YEAR: Silk
- 13TH YEAR: Lace
- 14TH YEAR: Ivory
- 15TH YEAR: Crystal
- 20TH YEAR: China
- 25TH YEAR: Silver
- 30TH YEAR: Pearl
- 35TH YEAR: Coral
- 40TH YEAR: Ruby
- 45TH YEAR: Sapphire
- 50TH YEAR: Gold
- 55TH YEAR: Emerald
- 60TH YEAR: Diamond
Needless to say, coming up with meaningful ideas will be more challenging some years more than others. Looking at the list, the 5 year anniversary is my year to shine. The hardest part this year was narrowing down the possibilities to just one project.
In the past year I was lucky enough to stumble across an old church pew in dire need of repair. This specific church pew came from the church where Lisa and I were married 5 years ago.
When I first purchased the church pew I thought I wanted to modify it to fit in the entryway of our house. Ultimately I scrapped that idea as it was not a good fit for the space. So for months it has been collecting dust in the corner of my shop waiting for the right project to come up that was worthy of such sentimental material.
I still plan to use a portion of the material for a small corner bench for our entry way but that is not exactly the type of anniversary gift I wanted to bestow upon my wife.
Growing up my parents always had their marriage certificate framed and hanging in the hallway of our house. I can’t tell you why that stuck out to me but it was ultimately the one thing that sparked the idea for this project/gift. After building the frame, I perused Home Depot looking for a piece of glass that was big enough to fit the frame. I stumbled across a pack of inexpensive square mirrors. Although I have never etched glass/mirror, I was aware that it was a DIY process that I was confident I could figure out.
I am pretty happy with how the project turned out. There were some new materials as well as processes and methods that I had never used before but luckily it all came together without the prying eyes of my wife finding out what exactly I was working on before it was done.
Side Note: My wife also planned on getting me a gift from etsy.com that used the same bible verse but the seller had personal issues that prevented her from getting the item shipped in time. Here is a pic of the gift she planned to give me.
