7th Anniversary Gift on a Budget

July 3 will be my 7th wedding anniversary.  Hard to believe!!!  My husband and I always use the traditional/contemporary anniversary gift guides for inspiration.  Sometimes, it can be really hard to come up with an idea.  Your 7th wedding anniversary is supposed to be copper or wool.  My husband asked me if I'd like a sheep.  (the answer is yes but we don't have the proper home for a sheep just yet!)  My husband loves to cook and I thought about getting him some kind of copper pot or mold.  However, money woes continue to plague us.  Even though pennies aren't really made of copper anymore, I thought I could do something with them.  Noodlebug and I dumped out our penny jar and I had him help me look for certain dates. I decided to go for both of our birth dates, the year we met, the year we got engaged, the year we got married, the year Noodlebug was born and the year of our 5th anniversary.  Choose any significant dates that would you like to include. If we had been blessed with another child, I would have used that birth year instead of our 5th anniversary.

I then went to Michael's with a coupon and got this copper-colored frame:

 

The frame has can accommodate an approximately 4.5 " x 6.5" photograph.  I probably could have gone smaller but I wanted room for the print at the bottom.  The "7" made of pennies is approximately 4.5" high and 3" wide. I hot-glued the pennies down and then put a small explanation of dates on the bottom.  (I apologize for the poor photo.)  Some of the pennies were pretty hard to find. I got lucky. My back-up plan was to find a penny for each year we have been married.  Hopefully, my husband will appreciate the sentiment behind it. I wonder what HE will come up with?