First Wedding Anniversary

Today is my one year anniversary with my darling husband, Ben. Since the traditional first anniversary gift is paper I couldn't go past making him a mini-album to celebrate our first year of marriage. It's pretty simple in design because we had originally decided against exchanging gifts so I made this the day before our weekend away in 12 hours.

I used the Kaisercraft After Five range becuase the neutral colour scheme made it easy to match photos from the whole year. There is four chipboard tags and three cardstock tags to make the album sturdy but not too bulky. I was able to use the 6" paper pad and the journal tags to complete the whole thing. Chipboard number, mini alphas, bling, alphas and flower are also Kaisercraft. Alphas are American Crafts. Doilies by the Chip Chop Shop. Ribbons were already in my stash.

In case you're a sucker for detail and want to get an idea of every page, here are individual photos of the whole thing. Probably best to click on the photo for the larger version is you want to see the details. I really like the effect of the full page photos. How young are we in that first photo, it was taken oven 10 years ago now! The very back pages contains my thoughts for the future and a copy of our wedding vows.

To celebrate our anniversary, Ben and I spent a couple of nights at Mount Tamborine, QLD. It's only about a 30 minute drive from where we live but is very different to the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is mainly known for it's beaches and theme parks. Tamborine Mountain is beautiful rainforests and sweeping views with a very arty focus. We spent the weekend visiting a number of different art galleries, coffee shops, wineries, breweries, cheese shops and fudge shops. We stayed at The Escarpment Retreat which was just lovely. Big four-poster bed, fireplace, double spa, you could hear so many frogs during the night (I LOVE frogs!), beautiful grounds to explore. They also have a 'home cinerma' experience which was quite enjoyable.

I wanted to share a photo of these goat sculptures from one of the cafes. They also had sheep and dogs for sale. I didn't even look at the prices for these guys though, as a palm sized version was $450!