Valentimes- the Whitaker Way

John suggest I change the spelling of the title to the way I actually pronounce it.. Yes i know it’s Valentine’s Day, but Valentimes just rolls off the tongue easier…

As I previously mentioned here this was our third fourth Valentine’s Day together. Rather than buy a bunch of gifts that America says show our love we opted to make each other gifts this year. Every year John hand makes me a valentines card, no chocolates and flowers for me. I’d rather get those randomly throughout the year, plus we keep a stash of dark chocolate around already.

So this year on top of the card John designed me this beautiful poster from a photo he took:

Looking past the words at the image- Fog rolling off the ocean- to me this image symbolizes that the rough times are past us, that things are changing. Last year was a really stressful first year of marriage. Not for our relationship, but from the hardships of John’s really demanding job, to losing his job and struggling to make ends meet for almost 6 months. We sort of lost out on that blissful newlywed stage and skipped right to the realities of life- bills, student loans, long hours and eventually unemployment.

Even though it was a challenging year I wouldn’t change a thing. We grew a lot this past year and learned that together we can overcome those struggles and we’ll be better because of it. We had no idea what was in store for us this year much less that we’d both get great jobs within a week of moving to Hawaii, find a great first apartment here and find ourselves with an abundance of time for just us. So in a way we are getting back all that time we lost.

I wanted my gift for John to document where we are literally and geographically without being tooo cheesy. I found thiswebsite where you can have your designs printed on fabric for a really reasonable price. So I pulled a few images and designs together and sent them off to be printed. In just over a week I got this:

After a little ironing trimming and sewing they were finished!

The back on the left is an image of Waikiki. This is the most famous view of downtown with Diamond Head and the ocean. The right pillow is just a wood grain, I’m really happy with how these turned out, I even mastered sewing a zipper into the seam so they can be washed!

I love that we were so in tune with our gifts this year, with both of them mentioning happiness. We’re feeling really blessed with this new opportunity and new year. We look forward to whatever is in store.