Father's Day Fail

As the Step-Mom, I have made it my mission to make sure CJ knows how great of a dad he is on Father's day, as well as Gracie's Opa (her Grandfather - CJ's stepfather).  To Gracie, her Dad is the light of her life.  She is a Daddy's girl through and through and I felt it important to help her show her Dad and Opa how important they really are to her.   And as always, as a Step-Mom I feel the need to go above and beyond probably what is normal.

We couldn't afford to get the gifts that I really wanted to get, so once again I had to get creative.  I logged onto Pinterest and searched for hours and pinned like it was my job trying to find the right gifts that would convey the meaning of the day and Gracie's feelings (even if it is a so called Hallmark holiday).  Now, this is where things started to go downhill...

I first thought it would be an amazing to incorporate CJ's dad into the gifts.  Even though he has passed, he is always in CJ's thoughts and tries to parent like him.  He truly was his role model, so I thought incorporating him into the gifts would be a great idea.  Right?!  I saw those generational photos on Pinterest - the kind of the photo of someone holding a photo holding a photo. I thought this would be great.  So I went through painstaking detail to find a picture of CJ's dad (I managed to find one of him holding Gracie as a baby), then had to talk CJ into taking a picture holding the photo without him seeing it and then had to have Gracie hold it while trying to explain the concept to her - a concept she didn't seem to think was as great as I thought it was.  I was hoping the finished product would look like this (what I found on Pinterest):

What I wound up with is below.  Now, obviously it didn't look AS silly with the coverups I placed to conceal Gracie and CJ's identity, but it still didn't look good.  I clearly needed to do this in black and white, had a darker background, have more patience and most importantly not think I am a professional photographer.  Problem is, I just took on a Freelance job (more on that in my next blog) and I was trying to pull this all together at 9pm the night before Father's day - so as much as this sucked, its what CJ was getting because I didn't have much else. 

As with anything Gracie gives CJ he said he liked the gift and put the photo up in our room.  I cringe every time I see it as I feel like its a constant reminder that I could have done so much better on this one.  I got a nice Mother's Day (even though Im technically not a mom) and feel like I failed CJ on this one.

Gracie's Opa is a wonderful man.  He loves her with everything he has and would do anything in the world for her.  His face TRULY lights up bright when she walks into the room and you can very much feel the love he has for her when they are in the same room together.  I believe she is one lucky to have an Opa like the one she does (and her Oma too).  Opa isn't a real emotional man, but anything that has to do with Gracie he cries.  It's awesome and I love it!  He'll cry if she sings in the Christmas chorus at school, or will tear up at times when she says how much she loves him.  He is very special to her so I wanted to make a special gift.  I forgot to take a photo of the final gift, but take my word for it, it SUCKED.  Its was a photo frame with two photos, one with Gracie and Opa and one that looked like the pic below.  I badly wrote on the frame matting "I'm as lucky as can be, because the best Opa in the world belongs to me".  In theory it was great, putting it together at 10pm the night before was a disaster. My handwriting was awful and I couldn't get Gracie to really get into taking the picture.  So I wound up with the one below in black and white.  To top it off when I printed it at Target they printed the wrong size and couldn't print a new one for me.  I was so disappointed :(  However, Opa still loved his gift and in true fashion it still brought tears to his eyes.

 

To be fair, we did have one Father's Day win.  It was this plate Gracie and I made before I started working.  She insisted I write "MMMM...Time for BBQ" at the top, and I think its fabulous!