Hey guys,
Long time no see. I have a lot of stuff coming up, as a lot of thing happened in my recent trips. I did not have the time to write much as I was traveling/road tripping full time, but I do have some time now! So here we go!
My friend Sam and me had planned a road trip to Greece, but a little stop in Sweden was primordial since my girlfriend and me have been separated for month.
I got so excited to see her that I could not even sleep on my way there. Fortunately, those sleepless night were not in vain as they gave me more than enough time to prepare her the best gift I could think of.
The idea was simple! But still came with a lot more efforts I could have imagine.
Idea: 3 different gifts, Coming all together.
Main gift = Custom t-shirt.
Second gift = A monkey plush.
Third gift = Pop corn.
My girlfriend and me have this little thing going on where I am a monkey and she is a panda. Since I already gave her a panda plush before, a monkey one was a no brainer here.
I felt like doing a little more effort on this one because it was the first time we were separated for so long. The pop corn part was really easy to come up with because she freaking loves the thing.
We made the test where there is a child in the middle of a room with his parents, both at different sides of the room. The parents have to call the kid towards them and with whoever the child ends up with, that is the parent he loves the most. Except that in that test, she was the child and I was competing with popcorn to see whoever she liked the most. Well I lost. Bad. That is how much she loves it.
Okay, so the monkey and the pop corn has been figured out but I felt like I needed one last piece to express my love for this fabulous woman. Something that would make her choose me instead of the pop corn on the next test.
The idea of a custom t-shirt randomly came trying to sleep in the van next to my snoring friend. ( he would have a different version as to who was snoring, but this is how I like to remember it.)
Once the t-shirt idea was there, it was also pretty easy to come up with what it would be. There is an obvious theme here. Monkeys and pandas. All that was missing was something that connects us both and was easy to illustrate. Ice cream! We both love it, when we travel together, we usually try a different ice cream place every day.
How to mix that together? Like this!
It took 3 different t-shirt printing store in Germany to understand what I wanted and that could do it on the spot!
After a full day of getting a t-shirt, It was time to find a monkey plush!
That was not easy either. It sounds pretty easy because you can imagine yourself randomly walking in a store and seeing one. The key word here is random. I ended up having to go in a plush store. Which is basically a store where they have all the plushes that could possibly exist for 10x the money you would buy them in a regular store. That did not stopped me, nope! I needed that monkey and I needed it now!
Here is a cool little building we seen in cologne looking for my future girlfriend's monkey.
It was really bad weather to walk outside for hours, but I was really motivated.
The last step! I had to find popcorn. easy right! WRONG!
Finding popcorn in Germany is IMPOSSIBLE. All we could find was that pre popped stuff. We searched in more than 10 grocery stores! No popcorn. I was getting desperate. I was making phone calls. I was looking on google maps for all the grocery store we would cross on our way up to Sweden. Nothing. The popcorn was literally the hardest part of that gift. If you need a useful life advice from this post, forget the gift and how you could make your girlfriend happy. This whole article is meant to tell you to never look for popcorn in Germany!
Getting distracted while looking for pop corn.
Turns out grocery stores in Germany compensate for their lack of pop corn with very cheap booze.
After getting distracted, I gave up. It was time to head to Sweden without a major part of my gift. I can hear you say, but Vinny, it is just pop corn. No big deal, no one cares. No! you guys don't understand! and it is normal, because I didn't disclose the idea behind the pop corn. The pop corn packets were going to be the box that contains the t-shirt! The pop corn is my gift wrap! What is a gift with no wrap?
Vinny the monkey helping me finding popcorn.
Don't worry folks! Turns out there is pop corn in every single grocery stores in Sweden!
My gift was done! I was ready to drive to my girlfriend's place!
Final gift:
T-shirt in the pop corn box!
No need to say that she was the happiest girl in the world when I arrived. The only person more happy than her was me!
This concludes this article, I hope you guys enjoyed it and feel free to use the idea for your own girlfriend but don't forget to let your own imagination work on it a bit!
Some stuff coming up:
Stay tuned!