The surprise

I have a confession to make: I think I might be a jerk. After careful deliberation, I've concluded that, given the evidence, a jury of my peers would find me to be of the jerky variety. This revelation has been quite disturbing since I consider myself a relatively nice person and believed that others thought the same thing. Oh, and to make matters worse, despite what I thought last week, my husband is not the least bit jerkish and tolerated my snarkiness for a whole week only to reveal that he was indeed, awesome. Let me give you the back story:

A few months ago it was decided that the husband and I would indeed exchange Christmas gifts. Sometimes we take a trip and call that our gift to each other or we gift each other with something for the house but this year I thought we should do gifts. The husband and I discussed this and agreed on the gift giving venture. I busied myself with securing a sweet gift or two for him and assumed he was doing the same.

So, Christmas rolls around and Benny K opens his gifts from me and is delighted which is the best part because I really hoped he'd like what I'd selected and he did not disappoint; however, look as I may (oh, and I DID look), I couldn't find a single gift that read: "To: Alise, From: Your loving husband." When this was brought to his attention, he claimed he didn't know we were exchanging gifts which made me want to wallop him a good one and then he claimed he completely dropped the ball and didn't get me anything. To say I was saddened and mildly annoyed would be an understatement. I couldn't believe that after six years of marriage, my unbelievably awesome-at-giving-incredibly-thoughtful-gifts husband had become a complete dud of a gift giver and I was not shy about bringing this to his attention. I'm pretty sure at some point I said things like: "It's not so much that you didn't get me a gift, it's that you didn't even THINK of getting me a gift" and "I guess I'll just have to get myself something" and the doosey: "This is unacceptable and I just want you to know that we will not be continuing this pattern in the future." I was not interested in hiding my displeasure and I certainly wasn't holding much back. Secretly, because I know what an awesome gift giver he typically is, I kept thinking surely he was kidding and there was a surprise right around the corner. New Years came and went and still nothing. I realized I had to let it go. Hope may win you a presidency but not a Christmas gift doth it bring.

So, we returned to Kansas (which welcomed us home with 9 degree temps and seven inches of snow and ice) late Saturday night and everything was normal and then Sunday morning, I went down to the basement to fire up the tele to watch The Soup and when I turned around I saw it: someone had broken into our home and done a complete room makeover on my creative space. In what used to be my chaotic sewing/craft room was order, organizers, a ribbon holder, shelves, plastic tubs, a thread organizer and a new embroidery sewing machine with a big red bow on it. As it turns out, it wasn't a B&E, but it was the husband who spent the week before Christmas building two new built-in desks, a cutting table, a sign that reads "Jean Jacket Fridays" (my fledgling creative label), building shelves, painting and making many trips to JoAnn Fabrics and Home Depot. He also enlisted several co-workers and friends to help him pull off the surprise. I had been longing to organize that room since we moved and dreaded going in there because it the disorganization was mind-numbing but devoting more than 15 minutes to a project isn't so easy to do with the Infant lurking at the bottom of every staircase and sticking every electrical cord in his little mouth. And here it was, the room of my dreams which the husband kept concealed for more than a week to let me discover it on my own all the while enduring several serious tongue lashings from yours truly.

I did feel mildly guilty for chastising him all week for his lack of Christmas gift but at the time, I thought he was totally deserving. Hindsight is a kicker.

BEFORE: The husband actually cleaned out the room (thank goodness) before taking the before picture but this gives a good idea of what he was working with.

AFTER: Here she is in all her glory!

My first project: the embroidery sewing machine is nothing short of awesome. It threads itself, cuts the thread for me and does about 60 different stitches. It is everything I've always dreamed about having in a sewing machine and yes, I dream about those things.