Something I never mentioned in the month of February, though it took me about a week and a half to work on, was my project for Andrea's Valentine's Day gift. I know the concept had been done before in the past, but I wasn't completely intent on having this be a groundbreaking experience. I was going for simple, but at the same time I was going for special as well. In the long run, I was being unique to our relationship, and though the concept may be old for other relationships before, this was something new to us, and hopefully something new to her.

The idea was to make her a mix tape, though no one uses a cassette tape anymore, and to burn her a playlist of songs that I associate with her on a day-to-listen experience. This idea eventually grew, as I had planned on printing out all the lyrics for these 20+ songs as well. I had then come to realize that I wanted to be more creative then centering stanzas on a blank sheet of paper, so I eventually decided to handwrite all the lyrics instead. Not only that, but I also included somewhat of a small letter introducing each song, more or less explaining exactly how each song reminds me of her and what exactly she and this song means to me.

I bought a pretty journal for this...unfortunately I don't have a picture so you will have to miss out on this.

Weeks before I started "production" on this project, I found a pretty cool website. 5inch.com
As you can see just by following the link, a custom made cd seemed a lot cooler than the usual blank CD-R. It was this print that I eventually chose for her cd; pretty appropriate, I imagined.

Regardless of the cheesiness factor and how cliche it might be, I was pretty confident that the overall gift would raise my romantic level up a couple of points...and hopefully cause her to be the envy of all her friends when they hear of how "great" Andrea's boyfriend is.

Ahem.

But I wanted to put more work into the project...I wanted to feel accomplished...rather than just give her something that any normal guy could think of and surpass in the future. (no doubt if I had written 20 songs specifically for her than all other girls would dump their boyfriends because all they received chocolates and stuffed bears.)

Truth of the matter is...this wasn't possible.
So I went with the next best thing.

One song on the album, So Much Love by The Rocket Summer, was a song that I knew I would include from the very beginning, but as she already had the album with this song and more, then I almost didn't see a point in putting it on there and having her listen to the same old thing again. I almost penned it off as just giving it an "honorable mention", stating that "This song WOULD be here if...", but somehow I got a better idea.

Having already analyzed and taught myself half of this song from one Youtube video, I decided to learn the rest and put as much effort as I could to make this song solely unique for me and her. The end result can be found here.

no, it's not the best, but with the limited time I had and the amount of experience working with garage band (not to mention the dozens of failed attempts) I had finally come up with the saving grace of my entire project.

Needless to say, me and her are still together and happy.
but with that gift now under my belt, I'm afraid I've set the bar too high...thank goodness the next romantic holiday is months away...as it will give me plenty of time to plot my next attack.
Thank you for listening.
Hope this made you jealous.