The Early Anniversary Gift

It's hard to be the OCD girl when it comes to gift giving. ESPECIALLY when you know there are lists that categorize the themes for gift giving. Anniversaries have themes, you know. Perhaps my gift planning would go more smoothly if I didn't know this, actually.

The theme for the first anniversary is paper, so when that day rolled around, I gave Ryan subway art chronicling our first year. The second anniversary theme is cotton, so I gave him a canvas with a quote he loved. And then comes the third anniversary: leather. What do you even get for a leather anniversary? {Maybe just don't answer that out loud, mmmmmkay?}

After wrestling with it for a while, I finally decided it might be okay to stray from the all-consuming list just a bit and get something that might {are you ready for this???} NOT be leather.

GASP.

Ryan and I love to window shop, and one night, as we strolled slowly through TJ Maxx, he saw a metal rhino head on the shelf. Yes. You read that correctly. A metal rhino head. It was intended to hang on the wall much like a deer head.

I've never seen a human being get as excited as Ryan did in that TJ Maxx aisle looking at that glorious piece of wall art.

You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. He loved that metal rhino. He looked at the price and put it back on the shelf, declaring it too expensive.

Whew.

But he talked about it the rest of the way through the store. About what a great coat rack that rhino would make for his office at work.

And so it was that a few days later, I tip-toed through the store again, hoping the rhino would still be there. On one hand, I really didn't think I had much to worry about, because hello...obvious. On the other hand, if it wasn't there, I knew I would never find another one, because hello...obvious.

It was there, on the shelf, and even on sale. Bingo. I carried that silly thing to the front, and when the cashier asked if I found everything okay, I said, "Interestingly enough, yes." She laughed.

I'd been hanging onto this little gem for our anniversary, but last week, Ryan started talking about shopping for a coat rack for his office - now - so I decided to give it to him early. After all, it seems coat weather is officially here to stay. So last Friday, when I went to his work to meet him for a date, I took the gift.

I think he liked it.

He was SO excited.

He was even MORE excited after he said "You didn't pay full price for this, did you?" He loved it more when he found out it was on sale.

His new coat rack!!

He said it was the best gift he'd ever gotten in his life. I'm not even sure how to take that, but I am so very happy he liked it.

Even if it wasn't leather. :)