30 Gifts for 30th Birthday - Part 1

For my husband's 30th birthday, I planned 30 gifts. My plan which seemed flawless went wrong many times through out the day in execution. If a movie could be shot based on that day, it would more or less be like the "expectations vs reality scene" from 500 Days of Summer movie. Or like the RHTDM movie scene with lot of goof ups on birthday(supposed to be). It seems amusing and even adorable in movie, but in reality it's nothing like that.

My 30 gifts include things, locations, handmade stuff.
Here are the first 10 gifts:

1. King status:

I gave my husband 'King' status for the day by crowning him and giving him a "royal invitation" scroll to his own birthday at 11.55 PM.  Now this crown is supposed to be something like the Burger King crown at least. But as I had no time, I just rolled a paper circularly and stapled it😐.

The invitation scroll has titles of a king(like Khaleesi's titles) and cryptic clues for that day's schedule.

Titles:

<husband_name> of House <surname>
The first of his name
Wanna be Data Scientist
Onsite enthusiast    //these are his interests
Husband of <my_name>, her Highness
King of <maternal_&_paternal_houses>
The Angry & The Silly //he gets immensely angry and also gets all silly

Schedule:

Schedule hints on scroll

Schedule hints on scroll

I hope you understand my hand writing :) Were you able to guess gifts from this list?
At the end of the day, the Queen returns 😋

I also arranged a bubble wrap carpet - like the red carpet on which King walks, but only more awesome.

2. Cake:

His majesty will bring darkness and devour soft beings - translates to - He will blow candles and eat cake(soft being).

I arranged candles in 30 shape on the floor.

30

I bought a vanilla cake mix and prepared the cake.
Expectation: Awesome vanilla cake with chocolate coating, kit kat borders and gems on top of it.
Reality: It's almost 12 and the cake isn't done yet. But as there's no time left and as there's no backup cake, I had to take it off before it was baked completely. The result is half cake stuck to the container and a big lump of cake which looked like upma. Obviously I cant coat that upma-ish-cake with chocolate. So I took a scoop of it and placed in a bowl and covered the horror with kit kats and gems.

Yep, that's cake

Lesson learnt: Always have a backup cake.

3. Life in pics:

He will survey the hanging - translates to - He will check the 30 photos of his life at various ages hung from 30 balloons.

Expectation: Balloons touching the ceiling and polaroid format photos hung from them which will gracefully touch the bed gently.
Reality:
I over-estimated my height by huge number - I thought that I was 6 ft. So after standing on the bed, I couldn't reach for the roof to stick the balloons. So I created a mesh kind of thingie under the roof using threads - by tying them across the room. Then I taped the balloons to this mesh. If I would have paid attention in school, I would have known that the weight of the balloons with photos will bring down the flimsy threads. But I didn't. So the balloons canopy hung very low.

I collected as many photos I could and picked the best 30 of them at various ages - toddler, kid, college student, first job, wedding, etc. I couldn't get polaroid format photos. All I could get were square 4*4 photos after checking form multiple studios in my area. And those photos didn't stand gracefully, they were just like me - awkward.

Balloons with photos hung from them

4. A brand new shelf:

He will invade new territories and expand his kingdom - translates to - He will get a new shelf.

Yeah, I know, you are wondering how is this a gift. But it is probably the best gift. Because I have given him like 5% storage in the entire house for his stuff. So I sacrificed a top shelf and gave it to him. This shelf was stuffed with other gifts.

5. 365 jar:

Unlocks the pensive - translates to - He will open the jar filled with 365 chits.

I used color papers to make 365 chits and I wrote several things on them - memories of his life, quotes, lyrics, tasks/challenges. This took lot of time and it's very difficult to remember and write down stuff. Another challenging thing was to fit all the 365 chits into the jar.

 

6,7,8,9: Noseyear:

That translates to nose, eye, ear - 3 senses. (I know it's lame)

I bought a pen drive which we both wanted and loaded it with a playlist of songs which I wanted him to listen. The songs are for the ear.
For the eyes, I have added a video - made with Picasa movie of our photos. The audio for this video was a medley of his favorite songs where I picked my favorite lines from the songs and mixing them in Audacity.
I placed this pen drive in a small matchbox which I converted to Awesome Mix Vol 1 (Guardians of the Galaxy) by sketching over it.

For nose, I added the aromatic leaves which we collected from Kerala- first place we visited together.

10. Pillow and painted pillow cover

Rest on fluffy things - rest on pillow. - Touch sense (4 senses completed so far)

Yeah, I know, doesn't seem like a gift. But it is. I used to give him a stupid pillow and keep all the good pillows for myself. So I sacrificed the best pillow to him. I bought pillow covers and painted them with two T-rexs trying to hug with their tiny hands. But I did a DIY before this by dipping the brushes in fevicol(I'm stupid like that) - so all the brushes turned pointy and I had to paint this with them.

T-rex couple pillow covers

These are the first 10 gifts I gave my husband at 12 AM. I will post the remaining gifts in upcoming posts. Hope you guys liked these ideas :)