Though my dad has never been the kind of person to verbally shower me with love, he shows how much he cares in so many different ways. Growing up, I didn't understand why he couldn't just say "I love you," but now I know that in his eyes, making sure our family had everything we needed and providing a good life for us was his way of showing his love. It's kind of like having to read between the lines. Even though I am married and living out of the house, he still does those seemingly subtle things.
For example, I still drive to my parents' house on work days so that my mom and I only take one car to school. On snowy days, my dad knows just how difficult it is for me to park sometimes with the mountains of snow blocking the regular spots. He will just have me pull into the driveway and then move my car for me so that I can just get to work without having that to stress me out. Another example is that when he does food shopping on Sundays in Chinatown or when he goes to Top Tomato closer to home, he'll buy an extra avocado or two and give it to me along with bagels since he knows how much I like them and don't really get it myself because they're expensive.
And even today, I know that my dad appreciated the card I made and gave to him today because he kept mentioning it and talking about it during lunch and in the car on the way home from church. Of course, he was teasing me saying that I made a mistake by making the tennis player left-handed. Take a look at it!
I made it last night knowing that the only way I could really let him know I appreciate him is by writing it down and giving it to him in a card. I didn't even make a Mother's Day card for my mom (sorry, Mom!), but I know that when school is out, I can take her out for lunch and we can just talk and talk and talk. I know that because of the relationship we have, I don't have to wait for the cards to express my gratitude. That's why it was important to me to make the card especially since I know he's been stressed lately taking care of my grandma.
For the tennis ball image and the tennis player, I actually used a cartridge I hadn't touched before called "Sports Mania." The ball was cut out at 6 inches (how awesome is it that I happened to have paper that's similar to the Wilson tennis ball color?!), and I cut two of the shadows in white to use for the actual card base. Knowing now that there's no way to make an envelope that big on the envelope punch board, I will make sure I don't make them any larger than 6 x 6! The shadow made it just a little bit over, so I had to figure out another way to make some sort of an envelope.
The tennis player was cut at 3 inches. I actually thought in my mind, "My dad is a rightie," but it didn't occur to me that I could just easily flip the image before I cut it out (yes, or flipped it before I glued it, but the cut edges would show more). Whoops! Dad was saying that he wanted to take a picture of it and show it to all his tennis buddies, but I put the guy on backwards!
Lastly, I used the cartridge "Boys Will Be Boys" because I liked the font on it. A lot of my other fonts on cartridges like "Lyrical Letters" and such are too loopy or cutesy. I used the text box to type out the letters, so on Cricut Craftroom, the text size was 1 and then I decreased the letter spacing to -3 so that most of them were welded together.
Like I said, I couldn't make an envelope with the punch board or with the score board. So I ended up cutting out a 7.5 x 7.5 square, scoring half an inch in, and applying adhesive to stick the two pieces together. The second piece was a little longer just so that I'd have a flap to close the envelope. I cut out the letters using "Boys Will Be Boys" again.
Even though I made a mistake with the right-handed and left-handed thing, I still think it came out pretty well considering it's very specific for my tennis-loving dad. I remember that as a kid, I didn't understand why he was always playing tennis after work. I used to think that he must love tennis more than he loved me, but I really didn't understand the differences between how men and women think and function until I started dating and got married. Now I understand that he needed a breather and to release some stress from his job, and I'm glad that he's still so fit and into the game now because of the exercise and the friends he has made through it! Maybe since he's such a great player, he can learn to play with his left hand so that this card is more appropriate ...
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