Gifts, Hand-Made with Love (and Talent!)

My sons are quite artistic.  No, they're very artistic.

When they were boys, they all spent many, many hours producing intricately detailed pencil drawings of dinosaurs, animals, sea creatures, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on large pieces of computer paper that their Papa gave us in reams.

I'm talking about old-school 80's-era computer paper.  It looked like this.

They filled countless sheets of this stuff.  If I had kept every drawing they ever did, I would need a special room just to house that collection.

I've blogged about my boys' talent before.  If you go into the archives under the title "art," you'll find a series called "T-Rex Week" that showcases boyhood drawings by all five.  Then there's "Crazy Creatures Week," which features the extraordinary creativity of son #4.  I've shown you the character cakes that my oldest son has made for his girls' birthdays, bringing Pooh, Piglet, and Elmo to life in colored frosting.   I guess I like to brag about my progeny, let's just put it that way.

Son #2 has always been extremely talented artistically.  As he got older, he went many years without putting pencil to paper, though; and then he took a drawing class in college and it was evident that although he hadn't used it, he sure hadn't lose'd it.  He did some incredible, very frame-worthy pieces while taking that class, all in charcoal.

Our boys choose names out of a hat to find out who they have for Christmas, and each of them gets a gift for one of his brothers.  Last Christmas, son #2 chose son #5, and he hand-painted two ornaments for him (one of which he's showing off in this photo).

I was so impressed, and I told him that he should always make rather than buy gifts for the family.  As you will see, he took that advice to heart--and I'm so glad he did!

We are visiting son #2 and his expectant wife, Ginger, right now.  We flew in last night, and after we arrived my husband and I were both given some belated birthday/Mother's Day/Father's Day gifts from those two sweet kids.  I thought mine were extra-extra special and extra-extra thoughtful.  I mean, look at the hand-painted ornaments my boy made for me!

I must tell you that my daughter-in-law Ginger gets some credit for these one-of-a-kind gifts, too, because she suggested to my son that he should create an ornament for each of his mom's books.

I'm thinking...if I write another book (a big if!), perhaps I should employ one of my talented boys to do the cover.  What say you?