happy birthday to my sweet hubby

Today my sweet Mark turns a cool 28 years old. Unfortunately the birthday boy had work today but fortunately for me it gave me a chance to decorate the apartment as a surprise when he came home. I made a colorful DIY garland out of paint chips from Home Depot (took me 3 trips to collect enough). Sadly, my sewing machine is still in CA (not sure how to ship it, bah!) so I had to string tie these puppies by hand. Sewing them would have been SOOO much easier. *sigh*

I used two different size circle punches and one with scalloped edges to make the circles and put two wrong-sides together so the ugly backside of the paint chip wouldn't show as much as possible.  Rather than being anal I decided to space them out randomly to make more of a confetti-like look. As I made my garland I kept the ends of the string long and taped one end to a stiff piece of cardboard to wrap it around as I progressed to keep it from tangling...which is the worst thing that could happen after you've spent so much time making the damn thing.

Above all I am so happy to celebrating today WITH Mark and not long distance like we did for too many years.  Happy Birthday, my sweet hubby.