It’s roughly a week until mine and Joshua’s fourth anniversary. Knowing me, you probably think I’m about to post the gift I’m giving him this year. Wrong! We opted out of gifts this year and took a trip instead. We traveled to the river city of San Antonio last week. Time is what’s most precious to us right now (him being in anesthesia school) so a trip seemed most appropriate.. especially when our breaks overlapped! That never happens! Actually back in March or so when I asked Josh if we could go somewhere during our summer break he said, “Yeah, I think we could do something that day.” Day!? Luckily it ended up being about 6 days.

We had a wonderful time in San Antonio riding bikes, visiting the historic missions, walking the romantic river walk, and riding the river taxis. It’s a place I’d definitely recommend to visit!

Beautiful river walk. Now that I’m home, I wish I’d taken more pictures of it! We ate at the cafe pictured, Casa Rio.

Cute Mexican papel picado bunting over El Mercado

Isn’t this a beautiful bike ride?

Stopping for a pic a Mission Concepción

Want to know how to get a picture of the Alamo with no people in it? Shout, “FREE ICE CREAM THAT WAY!” Ok, that’d probably do the trick (It was HOT), but actually we took this picture a little before 8:00 am. NO ONE was out there! That might be because it doesn’t open until 9, but there was no one anywhere on the streets. (That’s my kind of bike ride if you ask me! The less objects/people to hit, the better!)

Lovely extended arm picture in front of the Alamo doors. No way we were paying for the professional one they took!

Ok, so I totally didn’t intend for this to be a post about our trip to San Antonio. I guess I got carried away. I just loved it so much!

I actually want to share with you what I gave Joshua last year:

Since we had been married “tree” years I went with a gift that had three parts and had to do with trees. I know, I know, the traditional wedding anniversary gift for three years is leather. Does anyone actually go by that? Anyway, since Joshua was about to start school, I also went with a wallet friendly gift (In fact, I found these tiles in the teacher’s lounge at school!).

These were just plain white tiles that, like I said, I found in the teacher’s lounge. To make them personal, I decorated them using paint pins. (The poem I found online.. not my own!) To make it water and heat-resistant, I used pour-on. During this step, some of the marker smeared. One brand held true, and one didn’t, and I wish I could remember which was which! So if you’d like to do something like this, just test it out on a scrap piece. However, pour-on has proved to be a very effective product. We’ve been using the coasters on our night stand and the trivet (of course) in the kitchen and they’ve held up magnificently.

In order to protect the surfaces these would be used on, I adhered strips of cork on the back.

Along with the coasters and trivet, I also made a time capsule to keep little mementos in.

Again, I used a paint pin to decorate this tin. I did not, however, salvage this tin from the teacher’s lounge! Nope. I got it at Hobby Lobby.

Joshua actually loves this. Before we left for San Antonio he said, “Maybe we can buy something to put in our tin!” I said, “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t buy something to be special. Something becomes special through events.”

So what’s in our tin?

Well, let’s see. If you care to know, there is:

• a beaver stuffed animal Joshua bought me when we were first dating to commemorate an inside joke from our first date
• The clicker from the car where we had our first kiss. (awww!)
• a rose from my wedding bouquet.
• the wedding rice that we picked out of our hair.
• a shell from our honeymoon.
• a paint chip that I used to pick the color for the backing of our built-in bookshelves. It made the cut because after about 3 days I decided I didn’t like the color and we redid it! So it stands for Joshua’s patience with me!

Wow.. I think everyone that reads this needs to share something personal about themselves, because I feel like I just got really intimate with you guys!

What’s your favorite anniversary gift?

Oh, and just because I’m curious:

 

I’m linking up at: