10 Great Holiday Gifts Under $50
Dec.14
Photo credit: Ian Barnard
Christmas Day is only two weeks away, but your shopping list isn’t getting any shorter. Between your kids, relatives, friends, and the lucky colleague whose name you picked from the Secret Santa bowl, there are probably still a few handfuls of folks you’d like to surprise with a little something special this year. ‘Tis the season to feel elfish, right?
Giving gets even better when it’s done without breaking your holiday budget. We’ve compiled a quick list of 10 great holiday gifts under $50, which we’ll gladly ship to any of the 48 contiguous states for free until the last day of December. When you give a gift from WallCandy® Arts, you support a small mom-owned-and-operated business that designs products proudly made in the USA with non-toxic, high quality materials that will last for years to come. So, go ahead – shrink your shopping list with universally appealing wall décor from our 10-under-$50 gift guide:
Luv Letters – $6 per letter
Help your coworker claim his cubicle with starry blue stick on letters, provide your family’s patriarch with a proud surname to display on the foyer wall, or personalize your daughter’s bedroom with peel and stick letters in a whimsical bird print.
Superstar Chalkboard – $14
Give your niece a removable, reusable chalkboard star sticker to decorate her bedroom door now (and her dorm room door later). It’s removable and reusable without damaging surfaces, so her parents and future resident advisor won’t have to worry about chips or smudges.
Mini Chalkboard Panels – $18
Redesign your beau’s office space or your son’s pretend workshop to include mini chalkboard decals he can use and reuse to manage his to-do list without damaging that cherished Mets-themed paint job.
Mini Whiteboard Panels – $18
If there’s only one way to show your child’s teacher some thoughtful holiday appreciation, it’s giving him or her a trio of peel and stick dry erase decals for the classroom, kitchen, or home office.
Watch Me Grow – $32
For your family’s littlest growers, a cheerful growth chart wall sticker provides the best way to check vertical progress daily without marking up the walls.
Design Your Own Snowman – $38
For your aunt and uncle’s family, a design-your-own-snowman kit packed with removable, repositionable winter wall decals will encourage them to spend more than a few snowless afternoons sipping hot cocoa and building snow pals indoors.
Rococo Chalkboard – $36
This regal-looking decorative chalkboard decal is gorgeous enough to fit in with your best friend’s posh living room décor and functional enough to provide your dear mother a place for working out her latest recipes.
Chalkboard Heart – $36
No kitchen is complete without a peel and stick chalkboard heart for jotting down phone messages, grocery lists, or love notes. This spacious chalkboard wall decal is the perfect place to write “I adore you” all year long.
Night Lights – $48
Surprise your dear mother with a screened-in porch decked out in glow in the dark wall decals that emit just the right amount of moonlight without electricity or recharging. Each peel and stick strand is removable and reusable, so she can easily transfer her design to the guest bedroom in case visiting grandkids need a little nighttime light.
My Sunshine – $48
Know a nursery or playroom in need of some warmth? This all-in-one sunshine kit comes with a brilliant sun wall decal and the celestial accessories to keep blossoming babies always looking on the bright side.
Need your gifts by Christmas Day? Order with ground shipping by Dec. 16, or with expedited shipping by Dec. 20. We can’t guarantee that orders placed after those dates will arrive in time.
Happy holidays!
5 Reasons to Deck Your Halls with Removable, Reusable Holiday Wall Decals
Dec.9
Listening to people describe their holiday decorating schedules is pretty interesting. Some folks get it done by the end of November (or, in one case we can recall, right after dessert on Thanksgiving Day), while others wait until they’ve got presents in need of a shady resting spot. Your aunt Martha might throw a noisy tree-decorating party the first weekend in December, but the lady two people ahead of you in the grocery store line prefers a lazy evening spent stringing popcorn and cranberries with her two grown daughters home from college.
One member of our staff likes to invite her young nieces and nephews over for some homemade macaroni and cheese, which they eat while a Frazier Fir from Home Depot unfolds in the living room. After dinner, she helps the kids hang the ornaments and they watch Miracle on 34th Street until their parents return from a night out to reclaim their little ones. Once the kids leave and the silvers, golds, reds, and greens are all in place, she admits to experiencing a twinge of sadness that there’s no more decorating to do until next year.
We know the feeling and it’s exactly what inspired our holiday wall decal kits. Well, that and these five reasons to decorate a December (and maybe a bit of January and February, too) with peel and stick holiday wall decals:
1. It rarely snows on schedule. If only the Snow Miser could save his frosty antics for those long weekends when leaving the house wasn’t on the agenda anyway. And what school break isn’t made sweeter by a few inches of snow in the yard? For days when your hankering for some snow fun is hampered by a clear forecast, a couple of design-your-own-snowman and design-your-own-snow-woman kits can come in handy. Make a batch of hot chocolate, gather the kids, and spend an afternoon designing the kind of snowpeople that never melt and always have sunglasses to match their outfits.
2. Restyling trees and wreaths can get complicated quickly. Most adults don’t mind static, unchanging holiday decorations. They look lovely and require about as much upkeep as a cactus, so even the Queen of Christmas Trim can enjoy her season without adding a whole new list of to-dos to the next 30 days. Kids, however, crave any occasion to change things up, which is why every room they enter looks so different once they’ve left it. Add removable, repositionable build-your-own-snowperson wall stickers to your kitchen or playroom and, voila, you’ve got an interactive holiday decoration that doesn’t ever have to look the same and won’t require a drop of maintenance.
3. You could easily set up that holiday party well before next December rolls around. To create a festive background before the cookies are finished baking, simply add peel and stick holiday wall decals to any room and transform it into a celebration haven. Once the party’s over, remove and reuse them to decorate another room or re-stick them to their original backing and store until your next soiree.
4. Real do-it-yourself gingerbread house kits require throwaway bed sheets and more willpower than most of us can muster. Instead of fighting your inner icing demons and chopping crudités to counter your kids’ inevitable sugar intake, work together to design your own gingerbread house with nearly 150 sugar-free, interchangeable decorations. No mess, no fuss, and no extra calorie intakes required.
5. There is no way you’re spending your winter months repainting. Decorating is all fun and games until you pull those holiday cards down from the doorframe and find chipped paint beneath each piece of tape. Removable, reusable wall decal kits won’t damage surfaces, so you can deck your walls with cheer and never worry about chips or smudges.
What’s your favorite way to decorate for the holidays? Leave a comment or send us an e-mail at hello@wallcandyarts.com.
Create Easy Autumn Style with Apple Peel and Stick Wallpaper
Sep.23
Today marks the official beginning of autumn, which happens to be the official season for nature’s best blushing bounty, the apples.
In a previous post, we tooted our metaphorical horn in favor of the apple’s steadfast position as one of the healthiest, fiber-filled fruits around (and our apple chalkboard wall decal‘s usefulness when organizing a few of the apple-inspired items on your family’s autumn agenda). Everyone knows that what matters is truly on the inside – especially when it’s fiber and vitamins wrapped in juicy sweetness – but we’re also impressed by the apple’s shape as a classic style icon.
In New York City, the apple’s voluptuousness has provided many painters and sculptors with the space necessary to capture various artistic perspectives of city culture. Jewelry designers, both burgeoning and bigwig, know that apple pendants can either hold boatloads of rhinestones or shine with minimalistic glory as curvy, three-dimensional beauties in static sterling silver or gold. Even certain rappers-turned-fashionaires know that, of all the shapes a gal could want her jeans to create, the apple is one of the most agreeable.
And then there’s our new line of removable, reusable peel and stick wallpaper, which begins with three apple designs in subtle-but-sophisticated colors. To add a touch of fruitful autumn style to any room, be it a child’s playroom or your very own dream kitchen, simply cover one wall with peel and stick wallpaper and create a focal point you’ll enjoy long after the apple orchards are closed up for winter. For a few room-specific ideas, read on.
Cover the blank wall space between your cabinets and the kitchen counter with peel and stick wallpaper patterned with green Granny Smiths set in serene blue. Don’t worry about working around the toaster’s designated electrical socket – simply cover it, mark the area with a pencil, peel away, and trim a precise hole allowing the socket to peek through. Re-stick the reusable wallpaper and smooth with your hand to finish the job. Use any leftover wallpaper to line pantry shelves, turn a narrow connector wall into an apple-tastic accent wall, or provide an adorable background behind the photo collage on the fridge.
Teachers, pediatricians, and farm stand owners, give your home office a dose of effortless flair and design an accent wall decorated with peel and stick wallpaper covered in classic red apples. Whether you’re revamping a tiny professional’s nook or a spacious office-slash-guestroom, you won’t need to spend time slathering on the glue or primer to get the job done. Simply peel, stick, and use the included squeegee tool to smooth each wallpaper sheet. Should you make a mistake, it’s no biggie – just peel away and re-stick once you’ve scouted a better spot.
For a tasteful child’s bedroom decoration, add a peel and stick wallpaper headboard on the wall perpendicular to the bed. Use scissors to create the perfect square or scalloped shape, then stick and re-stick until you’ve designed a perfectly posh bed. If your child has already inherited Grandma’s Chippendale headboard, snip the removable, reusable wallpaper into wide bands and add them to a plain wall in a recurring sequence of stylish stripes. Line bookshelves or bureau drawers with any leftovers.
Got your own peel and stick wallpaper design idea? Tell us about it! Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.
This Birthday Decorating Kit Requires No Bull
Sep.12
One candle? No way!
As the girlfriend of an Irish lad with a host of small nieces and nephews, I celebrate a lot of single-digit birthdays. Because we were lucky to find an old Queens apartment with a massive living room connected to an equally large, U-shaped kitchen, we regularly host birthday parties for kids (when we’re not respackling the ceiling after the daintiest spring shower, that is).
In fact, we recently wrapped up a first birthday party in early September. Baby James turned one, which meant he didn’t yet have the vocal ability to share any recurring favorite characters or themes to inspire his party decorations. James’s mom and dad planned to stock our apartment with snacks my dearest and I will get to enjoy for weeks to come, so we felt that supplying the venue and decorations was the least we could do. Just as we were wondering how to make his first birthday memorable and easy, on ourselves as well as his parents, WallCandy® debuted the first design in their blooming collection of birthday decorating kits. The kit contains a room’s worth of western-themed wall decals, perfect for celebrating a child too young to insist on decorations that feature a trademarked cartoon character or comic book superhero.
Shopping for party decorations is burdensome; I’ve been to a gigantic party supply store and I could never call the experience anything but overwhelming. Instead of shopping multiple aisles to find complementary or matching decorations, I pressed a button and ordered an all-in-one western birthday decorating kit that just so happened to match a leftover hoard of plain red party servingware.
Once the kit arrived in the mail, I found preparing the party room to be a cinch. The peel and stick wall decals are removable and reusable, so I was able to play with a few different arrangements on the wall before finding one I thought made a lovely focal point. It took less than an hour to create a festive space and I never once worried about the post-party condition of our interior paint job. The cutest part of the kit has to be the bandana birthday bunting, which both inspired and matched Baby James’s party favors, miniature bandanas and sheriff star stickers.
At the end of the party, we returned the wall decals to their original backings and sent James home with some memorable playroom décor to inspire and give setting to any horse operas he might think up as he grows. I suppose we could have kept the kit to decorate birthday parties for other young’uns in the future, but we like to think we’ve planted some western obsession seeds to follow up on once James is old enough to appreciate Gene Autry and John Wayne. And is there a better gift than that?
Decorating a Dorm Room with Removable, Reusable Peel and Stick Wallpaper
Sep.10
Where to begin?
Inhabitants of even the swankiest campus dorm rooms agree – at first, those cinder block walls can be daunting. The wall color is typically an economical eggshell with a dingy yellow tinge, and you don’t have to be a talented interior decorator or celebrated psychologist to know that a week spent with such an icky color can be draining. The goal (and instinct, in most cases) is to personalize and add deinstitutionalized color to a dorm room’s drab walls, pronto.
Unfortunately, a significant roadblock to better dorm room design typically exists. Students who live on campus are familiar with the strict no-tape-no-tacks rules, and even those who dare to repaint with the promise of returning the wall to its original hue at semester’s end risk receiving a write-up once the first round of room inspections commences. Regular glue-reliant wallpaper poses a similar liability, but a quality alternative is newly available. WallCandy® recently launched a collection of removable, reusable peel and stick wallpaper that won’t elicit groans from an overworked campus maintenance staff. It’s a cinch to use, relies on a water-based adhesive that won’t ruin a dorm room’s paint job, and comes in stripes and patterns so cool visitors will wonder if they’ve somehow stepped off campus and into your posh first apartment.
If you’ve never worked with wallpaper before, no worries – this is not your typical wall covering. For starters, no primer, water, or glue is required. As you prepare to begin a full-time campus life, here are five suggestions for decorating a dorm room with peel and stick wallpaper:
1. Create a focal wall. Highlight the unique size and shape of your dorm room by covering the most prominent wall with colorful stripes or an eye-catching pattern. If you’re working with a railroad-style room, consider covering two small walls instead of one large wall. Once the mid-semester doldrums hit, you’ll have the option to change things up without worrying over chipped paint.
2. Design a unique headboard. It’s a cinch to cut each wallpaper sheet with scissors and add a little oomph to an assigned sleeping spot. Trim scalloped or ornamented edges with a quick cardboard guide, and then complete the look with bedding in complementary patterns or bright solids, depending on which wallpaper design you’ve chosen. If the standard-issue twin bed already has an existing headboard, a larger wallpaper headboard behind it will create some dimension.
3. Cover the ceiling. If you happen to like the color your school has selected for painting the dorms but need something other than chunky furniture to break up the monotony, consider adding a layer of wallpaper to the ceiling for a chic overhead view. Hey, it might even help muffle your upstairs neighbor’s midnight bowling sessions.
4. Line bookshelves, drawers, or dresser tops. Those massive textbooks won’t cover all the scratches and scrapes your borrowed bookshelves and bureau drawers have earned over the years. Give subtle spaces new life by lining them with leftover wallpaper and you’ll find that your room’s daily aesthetic value has increased exponentially.
5. Make a nook. Cover two perpendicular walls surrounding a corner desk to create depth and a multiple-room illusion. Decorating a designated space to look significantly different compared to the room around it can open up even the tiniest efficiency apartment and do wonders for a dorm room.
Perhaps the best part of working with removable, reusable peel and stick wallpaper is taking it with you when it’s time to move on. At the end of the semester, peel away each sheet and transfer your wall decorations to their original backing until it’s time to spruce up a new dwelling or give your old home bedroom a makeover.
Got a great idea for decorating a dorm room? Tell us about it! Leave a comment and share your vision for the perfectly adorned campus home.
Nocturnal Decoration Countdown: My Six Favorite Owls of All-Time!
Jul.26
My love for owls, totally based in jealously for their ability to turn their necks 360 degrees and get away with sleeping during the day, has been well documented on the WallCandy blog. Heck, I was excited when owl wall stickers made a cameo in the Forest Animal Wall Decals set.
So you can imagine my joy when I learned that WallCandy Arts was expanding its owl population — a bonafide excuse for me to think about my Six Favorite Owls of All-Time. Without further ado…
#6 — WOODSY THE OWL
This mascot of the U.S. Forest Service was hooting about not polluting way before all this global warming stuff. If the animation style is familiar, it’s because Woodsy came from the same pen as the creator of Smokey, the fire safety-preaching bear.
#5 — CHARLIE, THE “NEW ZOO REVUE” OWL
This 1970s syndicated children’s variety show, which was usually paired with other preschool favorites like Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo, featured singing animals along with friendly folksingers named Doug and Emmy Jo. Charlie, who wore his Ivy League credentials everywhere, lived in a tree trunk equipped with an elevator. His know-it-all attitude provided some desperately needed tension with the syrupy frog and hippo.
#4 — MR. OWL
As with Charlie, the Tootsie Pop Owl always wore his college graduation cap in public. His scientific experiments, carried throughout numerous lollipop commercials, sought to determine how many licks it would take to get to the chewy center of a Tootsie Pop. The epitome of impatience, the owl would inevitably bite the candy after only a few swipes of the tongue. Dentists must LOVE this commercial.
Ever the savvy marketers, Tootsie Roll Industries will send you a free Clean Stick Award if you do get to the center without taking a bite.
#3 — OWL THE OWL
Would you name your dog “Dog?” The curiously named Owl plays the intellectual straight man in a Pooh world inhabited with goofballs like Tigger. Only the Rabbit (same name situation) is his academic equal. Much like many cartoon stereotypes of owls, the Disney one is often blabbing life advice to friends regardless of whether they asked for it or not.
#2 — X THE OWL
A staple character on the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, the puppet kingdom of King Friday XIII on the PBS classic “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” the friendly owl often chats about his hero, Benjamin Franklin. You have to respect a bird that’s proud of American history. Even though he seems quite content living in a monarchy.
#1 — THE NIGHTLY NEWS 2 OWLS
For imaginative kids who like to get a little surreal with their coloring books, WallCandy Arts ditched the brown-tan palette and treated these owls like brilliant parrots or toucans. The deep purples, reds, greens and oranges contrast nicely with the subdued silver crescent moon and stars.
Your boy or girl may want to name these owls and incorporate them into nightly bedtime stories. As notorious nocturnal creatures, the Nightly News Owl gang will watch over their bedroom with wide-eyed enthusiasm — graciously keeping their hooting down to low volumes not detected by the human ear.
(Is there a creature– real or fictitious — that you would like to see in a future WallCandy removable wall decal set? Tell us who and make the case why they are wall-worthy at ideas@wallcandyarts.com)
Homemade Ice Cream Recipes for Planning Summer Dessert Socials
May.11
When I was a kid just old enough to navigate the dry goods in our pantry, my favorite game to play was Pretend Restaurant. My patrons (sisters) ordered spaghetti and steak, so I served them cereal and marshmallows. My middle sister, who is now a chef, liked to feign outrage, become unruly, and refuse to leave without taking an irritating nap on top of my place settings. Pretend Restaurant became much more fun during the summers, when it often became Pretend Ice Cream Parlor instead. I’d spend scorching afternoons watching my grandmother’s electric ice cream maker spin inside its little wooden bucket, ready to serve whatever manner of frozen chunky peach or mint chocolate chip ice cream would appear inside that thick metal container after hours of torturous waiting. My patrons were better behaved during the dessert course, but a surplus of sugar usually led to monkey antics at the ends of their bowls.
Wherever that little ice cream maker is, I bet it still works like new. Since one of my summer aspirations is to host a Saturday afternoon sundae bar soiree with a few pals (and maybe a sister or two, if they can control the urge to digress), I’ll need to browse a few used electronics sections to find one so comparably sturdy and loud. Decorating the adult version of Pretend Ice Cream Parlor should be easy, since I’ve long envisioned shades of chocolate browns glazed and spackled with oversized sprinkles.
One of the latest designs from WallCandy® Arts happens to be an extremely spacious ice cream cone chalk board wall decal. I got a chance to play with it during the ENK Children’s Show in March and immediately bought one the moment it appeared on the website. It doesn’t take much to get me thinking about ice cream, but an adorable person-sized space to play with sundae bar ideas is the stuff dreams are made of. Once my very real ice cream menu has been somewhat finalized and the soiree draws near, I’ll erase my blueprints and use it to display descriptions of my creative toppings for any visual learners I might invite. Or, if I’m feeling like a sharer, I could write my recipe in the sherbetest of invented fonts.
Even if summers are already pretty magical in your house, simply adding homemade ice cream to your summer to-make list will send a psychic shiver of glee down the spines of any child within a 2-mile radius. When it’s your turn to host a play date, suggest the kids decorate their imaginary ice cream shack and while you taste your way through the various stages of sorbet-making and topping chopping.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker, start with this basic single-serving homemade ice cream recipe from curvygirlguide.com to satisfy summer cravings without making a dessert run:
Ingredients
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup milk or half & half
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
6 tablespoons rock salt
1 pint-size sealable plastic bag
1 gallon-size sealable plastic bag
ice cubes
Directions
Fill the large bag half full of ice and add the rock salt. Seal the bag. Put milk, vanilla, and sugar into the small bag and seal it. Place the sealed small bag inside the large one and seal the large bag carefully. Shake until mixture is ice cream, which takes about 5 minutes. Open each sealed bag carefully and enjoy!
For a more grown-up ice cream party, try this homemade raspberry buttermilk sherbet recipe from foodnetwork.com:
Ingredients
6 cups raspberries (5 or 6 pints)
1/4 cup 100% grape or apple juice
1 cup superfine sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and freshly cracked pepper
Directions
Puree the raspberries, juice, and sugar in a food processor until smooth. Pour through a mesh strainer into a bowl and discard the raspberry seeds. Stir in the buttermilk, cream, and a pinch of salt, then cover and refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to an airtight container and freeze until firm, at least 2 hours. Serve sprinkled with pepper.
I’m personally going to try my hand at a sherbet punch ice cream. I haven’t found a solid recipe yet – at least not one that includes any warnings about turning the punch into a solid ice cream – but experimenting with dessert sounds about as risky and intimidating as laying on a beach in Bermuda. I’m sure it’ll be fine, as long as no one demands a sample before my concoction’s official Pretend Parlor debut.
Warm Up Your Decor with Summer Shades, Shapes, and Wall Decals
Mar.16
We definitely need some sod for the living room. (Photo credit: Ryan L. Hyde)
This week, it’s supposed to reach the 60-degree mark on the official New York City thermometer. Lately, I’ve been wondering about that thermometer. I’m not sure where it’s kept, what it looks like (cartoonish oversized novelty thermometer, or electronic wonder small enough to fit inside a button?), or who’s in charge of checking it, but I hope he or she is strict and diligent in limiting viewing access. This winter is passing through at a frozen-molasses pace, so it worries me to think that someone has been staring at the official thermometer often enough to cause watched-pot-never-boiling conditions.
Because I just can’t wait to stash my woolly socks away for a short season, I’ve decided to take on a summer-invoking decorating project the way a kid left to call all the interior design shots might hang up the holiday lights the day after Halloween – with gusto! March is always a low-budget affair, but there’s usually a welcome delay in any financial pinch I feel while sprucing up for the warmer months. I suppose throws, insulating curtains, and thicker materials are easily more expensive than vintage mirrors, potted African violets, and pillows fit for a warm afternoon’s nap.
If you’re interested in starting your own relatively inexpensive early indoor summer, start with these five tips for an easy seasonal shift:
1. Consider the sun. As you switch accessories and adjust your color scheme, choose fabrics and hues that look best in bright, cheery light. Mirrors – especially the kitschy vintage kind – are classic sunshine reflectors, so why not hunt ‘em down and hang ‘em up?
2. Berries are best. Replace forest greens with grape, beiges with golden raisin, and reds with raspberry. Color is king from May until December – go ahead, crown your space early this year. After all that snow shoveling we did, we totally deserve a sweet color makeover.
3. Pick summer shapes. The iconic soft-serve snack inspired WallCandy’s new ice cream cone chalkboard wall decal. It’s taller than Lilly, our resident product tester and Allison’s adorable 6-year-old, so there’s plenty of space for a Saturday sundae bar menu, potential summer road trip routes, or a countdown to the school year’s official end.
4. Move flourishing greenhouse perennials to the living room. I love a few good cacti because they love a humid day, they live to be forgotten, and the cat stays far away from all tipping points. If you’d rather keep your plant life to a minimum, try enhancing your indoor creepers by adding a kit of gracefully lush flower garden wall stickers as a baseboard accent.
5. Decorate to remind your kids that winter is on its way out. Nothing’s more contagious than childhood spring fever, so adding a row of festive flowers wall decals or a mighty sun wall decal to your child’s favorite environment is sure to inspire more than a few infectious good moods.
Share your summer decorating tips – we’d love to know how you shed the winter blechs and prepare for longer, sunnier days perfect for sipping iced tea and watching the bubbles float on the breeze.
How a Heart Chalkboard Wall Decal Begat a Better Valentine’s Day
Feb.14
Craig makes it impossible to shop for him on any holiday, which becomes an even bigger obstacle when a holiday technically requires a gift with a specific romantic message. He’s a terrible consumer. If he wants something and happens to mention it in my presence, he’ll immediately talk himself out of wanting it before I can finish staking my mental garden marker in what was briefly a flourishing gift idea. I’ve done the math – six years of dating multiplied by roughly three major holidays per year equals 18 or more times I’ve gone shopping and returned with only sore feet and stress-induced hives.
This year, I decided to embrace the Valentine’s Day spirit by fusing decoration, adoration, and inspiration on our kitchen wall. I arranged a chalkboard heart wall decal opposite our front window where any passing city-dweller could see it and perhaps be unconsciously warmed, should he or she be scanning for visible décor through the windows of the overhead apartments. Thankfully, I’m no longer confined to keeping my chalkboard decals where I know Craig will see them, as he now seeks out and quickly fills all the shapes I bring home with his to-do scribbles before I’ve had a chance to finish playing with potential designs.
My plan was threefold: to decorate lightly for Valentine’s Day (the surprising number of New Yorkers who adorn their porches with lights in February is quite inspiring, although I suspect many of them have simply added strands of red to the white lights they used back in December), to add a month’s worth of meaningful appreciations to a relatively dull daylong celebration of love, and to actively brainstorm until I’d drummed up a decent gift and overcome Craig’s indulgence handicap for once.
“Don’t write on this one,” I told him, sticking the baby hearts where they’d look bubbly and supportive of the queen heart.
“Why not?” He was chewing.
“Because I’m gonna use it to write you a little love note every day this month. It’s part of your Valentine’s Day gift.”
He paused between bites of bran flakes and said, “You don’t have to do that.”
I told you not to get me anything.
(Photo credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
I’d prepared myself for this exact infuriating response, which came from the same place that won’t allow him to buy himself a new pair of Levi’s but once every decade. My response was simply to write “I love you because…” at the top of the heart, leaving space for the first of my daily reasons – “I love you because you’re slightly easier to shop for than the Dalai Lama.”
I wrote a different reason every day for the first two weeks of February. I praised his dedication to nailing a perfect Marge Simpson impression. I celebrated his clam chowder recipe, as well as his admirable work ethic and ability to remove mysterious laundry stains. It’s been a unique challenge to come up with a new and true sentiment for each day, so I recently gave myself a break and instead drew a picture of two doting stick figures at a movie theater, a mountain of fluffy yellow popcorn parked between them.
Craig stood in front of my hasty chalk art for a moment, again munching his morning bran. “Remember that time we left after watching one movie and decided to turn right around and go see another?” he said. “That’s always been my favorite date of ours.”
With that, my chalkboard project led me right where I’d wanted to go. For his official Valentine’s Day gift, I made him a Cinema Night kit complete with microwave popcorn, an economy-sized resealable bag of peanut M&Ms, and a pack of movie tickets thick enough to put us through Oscar season and beyond. It was an easy, stress-free spree.
I plan to see my daily love notes through to the end of the month. Once March 1 arrives, our heart chalkboard decal will become open for his reciprocated affections, fondue recipes to try, running lists of must-see coming attractions… all the lovely things its shape inspires.
