a birthday plate

Rachel had a really amazing birthday idea back in November for me. We went to a place called All Fired Up in Lynchburg. Many of you probably have a place like this in your local towns, but ours plays a ridiculous Oldies radio station and is not what we consider to be the most comfortable creative environment. However, we were still able to produce this:


It's a birthday plate! For whomever to use on their birthday. This project in all took us 3 trips out to Boonesboro and 5 cups of coffee (there's a Starbucks just around the corner) just to finish it. But, there were 4 different dates involved (one to pick-up the plate and another stop at the Starbucks), so it was a (or four) relatively inexpensive ($13 plate) date idea! Here's the back:



SIDE NOTE: Every family has traditions. Our family had a lot of unique ones, Rachel's had a lot of spontaneous ones.

Perhaps Melissa remembers this. We used to have a record player that would play a special birthday record every time it was our birthday. The records we special and had our name in the song. I think that picture had a man riding a rocket or a crescent moon on the front, probably with stardust flying off the rear of his vessel. I really like the song. It went something like this, "Hey Kevin, it's your birthday... [enter other rhyming text here]"

Traditions... hmm. After years of using this plate, I have a feeling that our kids will try to hide or shatter it. We love it, it's better than we had in mind when we started. We're starting traditions early in the Mahan home.