[My Christmas (2005) Present]

Mannn ... I know it's a little bold, but I don't think there's anybody out there who gets a Christmas present as big n' mobile as the one I got from my sweetie husband.

Way way before Christmas ... I had been whinning about needing a more spacious kitchen for the stuff that had started to pile up on one of the corners. For that we'd been shopping around for a shelf to store my kitchen precious n' treasures and his "junks" (heheheheee...) but we can't seen to find one that we like - - - it's either too tall or too short, or when we miraculously found one of the height that we want, it can't fit into where we wanna put it. All in all, it'd been a long hunting process for, what we thought, a simple kitchen shelf.

Anyhoo... about 1.5wks before Christmas ... he decided to build one himself. This way we could have it the way we want it to be. So... the Saturday before Christmas eve, we went to Lowe's to buy all the materials needed for building the shelf. After that ... he worked pretty much day n' night on it. Every morning, way before I was up, he's already out and about working on the shelf; and every night I pretty much had to drag his butt to bed or he would still be working, well into the wee hour!

After a week of hard work - measuring, sawing, drilling, and hammering, on top of everythingelse ... we finally have a kitchen shelf that we like in term of design and size. Obviously, I knew he's building the shelf, so there's no surprise there. What surprised me was what I saw being engraved on!! Look!!

left: actual engraving right: charcoal trace on the engraved characters after they were done

He engraved "Hanzi" characters (or mandarin characters) saying: From Oxie To Piggie (note: oxie is him and piggie is me). Originally he was gonna engrave "A Christmas Present From Oxie To Piggie" ... but one character would take him 30 ~ 45mins to do (or a lilttle longer for more complicated characters ... amazing, isn't it?!) which means, the whole clause would take him at least 6hrs to finish! I stopped him from any further engraving when I found out how long each character took him. I told him if he wants, he could add the characters later. Mmmm... he actually suggested that maybe he'll find a way to add a removable plate onto where the engraving was being done on ... this way ... he could customize it to say: "A Birthday Present From Oxie To Piggie" or "A Valentine's Day Present From Oxie To Piggie", etc. Of course... he got a kick on the behind for that! =))

note1: The engraving was done on a "real-time basis" ... meaning ... no tracing or writing on the wood before carving. So ... if an extra stroke was mistakenly carved, that was it!! It's truly work of a professional!

note2: My husband used to carve stone stamps as a hobby. I guess that's why the engraving on the shelf was piece of cake to him.