Surprise for Grandma!

This year Grandma turned 80 and I wanted to do something a little bit special. I love surprising people so that was mandatory in the planning. I wrote the whole extended family and asked them to send me pictures of them, their families, old photos, or even photos with Gma. (Thanks to all that sent some by the way. The rest I just snagged from Facebook. Thank you FB for being so sketchy for stalking but so helpful at the same time!) Then I printed off all of those pictures. Some of the ones that Uncle Randy sent were priceless.

My next step were these cute sewn garlands I saw on Pinterest (of course) a few months ago. To put them together you simply sew through the middle of each heart, pull the thread, and sew through another heart until you have it the length you want. I know Grandma loves music and writing so I found old books and cut out hearts from their pages. I had some old wrapping paper with music notes on it and used those as the accent hearts. Then I printed Grandma's famous saying as little tags that read: We love you a bushel and a peck. 

Living in Gma's basement we know that she is up at all hours of the night, so the hardest part of this whole thing was probably planning when and how to quickly get it all put up without getting caught. She was in her office with the light on each time we ran up and checked, so from probably 12-1 AM we stealthily put up the garlands, and put a cute freesia plant with a card on her table. It wasn't until about 2 that I finally accepted the fact that she was not going to bed and I needed to get the "80 photo sign" done. Game time!

Jason had fallen asleep, so I sneaked upstairs (yes, sneaked is a word...we had a bit debate) and started to place pictures on her wall in the shape of a big EIGHT ZERO! Let me just tell you though that it was pitch black. I could only see the general outline of the pictures once my eyes re-adjusted, and the tape I used was probably 1 cent considering how many times they kept falling.

I was only about 5 pictures in when all of a sudden Gma's office door opened and she started walking down the hall towards me. I dove behind a chair and watched as she spotted the decorations we had started. It was kind of neat hearing her gasp and chuckle to herself. She proceeded to get ready for bed and I waited and waited until her bedroom door shut.  PHEWPH! Close call. I went back to work in the dark and then jumped into bed completely unsure of what the finished product looked like!

The next morning I rushed out the door to work running a bit late (4.5 hours of sleep is no bueno) and noticed a thank-you note from Grandma saying how much she appreciated her surprise! It made me feel pretty great but I still had no idea what it looked like in the light! I heard that lunch bunch with all the cousins happened and I was still hoping and praying that things looked good and that SOME of the pictures had managed to stay in the form of an 80. Needless to say, I was pretty anxious to rush home after work and see how things had managed to turn out.

I took some snapshots and this is what it looked like:

I found out after that the pages I cut out had the word Grandma on them!

You see the blue chair? That's what I dove behind haha. Thank you dark!

I LOVE freesias.

HAPPY 80TH BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!
Glad you enjoyed our version of a "heart attack". hehehe

Love, Bry and JP.