For this year’s gag gift, a friend of mine gave me the brilliant idea to turn both of last Christmas’s images into a hidden-message sequin pillow. These types of pillows are a fun gift—they’re made of sequins that display different images depending on which way they’re facing. To switch between images, you simply reverse the sequins by brushing them with your hand.
I went ahead and ordered a sequin throw-pillow case customized with both the original and re-created photos, excited for this iteration of these beloved family photos.
But now that I have the result in my possession, I don’t love the way it looks. The sequined images look patchy, making the photos hard to discern.
To be clear, this is on me—the Etsy seller I worked with warned me that, because I wanted to display my full body in both images, the result might suffer. They recommended that we crop the photos to display only my face, but since the pose is central to the comedy, I asked them to proceed with the full-body image anyway.
I’m not sure what I’ll give my family for Christmas now that this gift has fallen through. But I’m not too worried. These gifts bring me as much joy as they do to my family, so I’m confident that I’ll come up with something before the holidays. What started as a hilarious photo unearthed during one of the darkest times in our lives has turned into a beloved tradition, keeping our spirits high year after year.
As Christmas approaches, I’m confident I’ll come up with something equally ridiculous—and I can’t wait to hear my family’s laughter echoing through the house once again.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Catherine Kast.
