50 Things (Not 50 Shades...) Gift Idea

As promised, I want to share with you more about the gift we got Zach's mom for her 50th birthday. But first, a little bit about our other weekend shenanigans.

Friday we celebrated our 4th anniversary(!) with dinner at Purple (yes, I most definitely devoured the lobster mac n' cheese) and then Les Mis at the 5th Avenue. A funny thing happened on the way to the show though... we forgot our tickets! Yeah. This almost never happens to me (Zach is a different story  though:) and I was pretty mad! Luckily, we had dinner reservations pretty early (5:30) since that's all that was available for us procrastinators and we had just enough time to drive home to Renton (from Seattle) and back again with about ten minutes before the show started! Phew. 

What did I think of Les Mis, you might ask? Well, I thought it was really good. Zach loved it and thought it was amazing. The music is amazing (some of the best voices I've ever heard!) and the set design was fantastic. The big turn off for me was that I knew nothing about the storyline before we saw it and I got a little lost/confused throughout the show. It jumps ahead a few years (a couple times) and there are so many complexities of the story, that is was hard for me to follow. I think if I would have read the book before hand (like Zach) or watched the movie it would have helped and I would have enjoyed it a lot more. But, that being said, I still thought is was really good! 

Saturday we headed over to Poulsbo to celebrate Renee's 50th birthday. We had a lot of fun with close friends and the whole Kane clan (first time all together since Christmas!). Lots and lots of laughs and food and good times were had.

And now on to the super sweet present we got her. I had this idea months ago with the original inspiration via Pinterest from Nothing But Bonfires. I loved the idea of 50 Things We Love About You on Your 50th Birthday. Originally I thought I could just put each thing on a piece of paper and then put the 50 pieces of paper in a mason jar, but my sister-in-law Katelyn suggested that I put it into a book. It turned out being even better than I thought because we got to put in photos of Renee and the family along with our "50 Things." I had a lot of fun gathering all the "things" from all the family members and putting it together. Such a fun way to honor someone on their birthday. 

Here's some shots of how the book turned out. I used Shutterfly and really liked how I was able to put it together more like traditional scrapbooking with embellishments, stickers, etc.

Renee loved the book - it was a big hit! Happy 50th Birthday Renee!

Have you made any photo books recently? Do you make one every year or are you a few years little behind like me? Do you use Shutterfly, iPhoto, MyPublisher? What's your favorite?