Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Gifts for the Groomsmen

Mr. T has five guys standing up beside him on the day of our wedding.  His two brothers, a friend from grade school, and two guys he played football with at U of I.  They all mean a lot to him, and for the longest time we couldn't think of a good way to thank them for everything.
I wanted to leave the gifts up to him, since they were his brothers and friends, and he should know best what they would like/enjoy.  But he wasn't really coming up with anything, and I couldn't think of much either.  We popped into Things Remembered once and took a look at flasks and beer mugs, but just couldn't get on board with that idea. 
Then I thought it might be nice for them all to have a pair of Crocs that they could wear at the reception.  I said black, but Mr. T said since he and his brothers already have camo ones, that we should get the other three camo Crocs to match.  I was on board.  I even pulled them at work in the sizes we would need, and found a little pair for our ringbearer too.

But then I came up with a different idea and ran it past him.  Bean bag boards.  He was totally on board.  Yup, I signed up my dad to build 5 sets and my mom to paint the base color on all of the sets.  She's going to drive them all up to MN next week when she comes for my first shower so I can handpaint the designs on all of them.  I might be just a little crazy to take on a project like this with just over two months to go, but I think it's going to be awesome!
Here are a few of the boards I've painted over the last year.  Can you tell my family is from Wisconsin?!  Each board takes about 5 hours to hand paint each design.  So I'm looking at about 50 hours of work that I need to find a way to squeeze into my already busy schedule.
Oh and there's the matter of cutting and sewing all of the bags.  No big deal though.  Ha.

So even though I'm probably way crazy to take this on, I'm very excited about it.  We're going to do the Illini Chief head for two of the sets for the boys he played football with.  Then we'll probably do Chicago Bears for one set for his grade school friend.  And for his brothers, we haven't quite decided yet, but it will probably be some sort of buck/fish sort of thing.  So far my dad has all of the sets built, and my mom is going to start getting the boards painted so they'll be ready for me to put the finishing touches on them.
We're looking at about $50/set which isn't bad as a gift considering these could definitely be considered a $150 present.  I think they guys will love them!

1 comment:

  1. This is such a good idea!! Josh's boys would love to get this as a gift, but...yeah...too much work lol. I can't wait to see how yours turn out. I can't believe you're hand-painting them!

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