The First 10th.

Andrew and I have two anniversaries. Today is our "First" 10th anniversary. Our "first" anniversary of the calendar year is the anniversary of our Justice of the Peace ceremony, which took place in Fayetteville, NC on June 21, 2002. (Click here to read about the actual day, which I'd blogged about last year on our "First" Ninth.)

The condensed version is as follows.

We were both active duty in the Air Force. As of January 2002, we were planning on getting married in December 2002.

But I was stationed in Tucson, AZ. He was stationed in Fayetteville, NC. I was expecting orders for a new assignment by the end of Summer 2002. He wasn't going to get orders for another couple years (maybe 3). Well, in order for us to be stationed at the same place at the same time, we couldn't be simply engaged, we had to be married.

Hence, the Justice of the Peace ceremony, which took place June 21, 2002, just in time for them to cut orders for BOTH of us at the same Air Force base, at the same time.

The Justice of the Peace ceremony was small, informal, and included a few of the guys from Andrew's office. Meanwhile, plans for the church wedding in December in Chicago were continuing to keep me, my mom, and the wedding planner busy.

(Our "Second" 10th anniversary - celebrating the church wedding - is December 14th, 2012, in case you're wondering. But I'm sure I'll blog about it when the time comes.)

Anyway, knowing Andrew was busy and probably hadn't planned anything to commemorate our first decade, I decided not to do anything big. I figured we'd keep this one small, like the original ceremony was 10 years ago.

Here's what I did. Yesterday, Livie and I went to the open art studio at The Dreaming Bear, here in town. Partly it was something fun to do inside (in AC!!!) on a hot summer day. But partly, I wanted to do something other than getting a boring ol' anniversary card. Because it IS the 10th anniversary, after all!! Right?

So Livie worked on her own art project (painting a wooden horse cutout).

And so I picked out a small, white stretched canvas (something like this, but about 4"x6"). Then I painted the base color (sort of turquoise-like) and then the letters and dots, and then it got glittered-up. Just to be cute.

Like I said, it's just something cute that we could hang somewhere in the house. I'm not good at painting letters freehand, so don't expect anything Degas-like, or something like that.

Better than a card, because I made it myself. Plus it was fun to make. However, I won't quit my day job anytime soon. (Or I'll stick to photography as my art medium!)