By “tragedy” I mean gifts that went wrong somehow: You promised it, but couldn’t get it… it was meant with the best intentions, but was not appreciated as such by the recipient… stuff like that. By “triumph” I mean that time that you were able to get the last Gotta-Have-It toy available in your metro area… the time you were creative about getting a gift… the time you totally surprised (even to tears) someone with your gift.
This year, both were for the same present…
Tragedy
My 11yo wants a new room. Same stuffed animals, same books, she just wants a different look to the walls - more “naturey”, more “hobbity.” It’s the big theme this year at Holy Spirit Catholic School and Sophie, who is more of a outsider than insider (according to her - imho, she’s more inside than her mom and I were), is in full agreement with this sentiment.
So we went to Ikea, bought some inexpensive shelving and baskets, got rid of her heavy pine dressers (bought from Rooms-to-Go about 15 years ago, given to Salvation Army (Goodwill SA does not do pickups)), painted the room a sky blue with white trim, and arranged for a local artist friend of ours to paint some designs on the walls - trees, hobbit holes, bunnies, whatever Sophie wanted.
One thing before I get in this:
She volunteered to do this for free. We would pay for paint and equipment, she would come over one afternoon and put some trees and stuff on the wall. This, painting walls, is something she does for children of friends and families, while charging other people. So, in our mind, she was under no obligation to do this.
We had dinner with her and her family on Thanksgiving, where we made arrangements to get the wall painted “in the next couple of weeks.”
To make a long story short, she went completely dark, radio silent after that. Didn’t respond to emails, didn’t respond to texts, didn’t answer phone calls, never called back when left a message, nothing for 2.5 weeks. So while she was under no obligation to do this, we do think that she was under obligation to tell us that she was NOT going to do this, especially after agreeing to do it.
So Sophia wasn’t going to get her hobbit room after all.
Triumph
So I’m discussing it with my wife, and I think about Fatheads, asking Laura “I wonder if they have the Hobbit license?”
So I get online and look: No, they don’t have Hobbit licenses, but you have the option to create your own, which got me thinking…
Is there a way to recreate Bilbo’s doorstep? I wonder if there are any pictures online of the movie set? Hell yeah, there’s that “Hobbiton” place in New Zealand! I bet I can find some pictures of the shire, Bilbo’s door, something…
So I go to Flickr, do a search on “Hobbiton” (searching only copyright free (creative commons) content), hoping to get a decent shot that somebody took on their vacation. The Fathead specs for the size that we were ordering (5ft X 6ft) needed a pic that’s at least 2mb, was 2000X2000 pixels in image size (that last number is wrong, but I don’t want to look it up while I’m typing this), and one other thing that I can’t remember.
The Fathead looks fantastic. We put it up and surprised Sophia with it when she returned home from school.
Whew!