A series of images from his 31st birthday, in which I pulled out all the stops. I set up an elaborate treasure hunt, I decorated with the finest accessories the Dollar Store had to offer, and I had a grand surprise waiting for him at the end of the trail.

(click images to view full size)

top row, left to right
1. Two notes hang under the "Happy Place" sign on our front door:
A birthday hunt awaits you here. 6 gifts are hidden somewhere near. Follow clues around the house until you find your loving spouse.

Clue #1: Though small I'll catch your cares with ease. Start out where you rest your keys.

2. The first prize is a small ceramic trinket dish resting on his bedside table. It is inscribed, "pray more. worry less."
Clue #2: No need for Travelocity where I roam, I'm in the guest room of your home.

3. The next gift is a gnome plush with a big hat and super long legs, lounging on top of the guest bed.
Clue #3: You'll never miss us in the dark. We're prowling where you keep your Quark. (the cheese, not the ferengi)

4. Gift three is a bundle of various glow in the dark dinosaur toys including one Grow and Glow figurine, and a two-pack of dinosaur bone model kits. I wrapped them in tissue paper and hid them in the fridge.
Clue #4: DASH now to the TV screen. There I'll greet you "bween, bween, bweeeeen!"

bottom row, left to right
1. On top of the TV is perched treasure four, an imported figurine of Tron Bonne using a servbot as a chair.
Clue #5: In the top drawer by your computer, waits a litter than couldn't be cuter.

2. The next prize, found in his computer desk drawer, is a package of holographic kitten stickers.
Clue #6: In the office a treasure find. Learn to see what once was blind.

{insert minor explanatory detour}
The whole time he had been on an adventure quest around the house, I had been silently hiding in my office with The Big Gift.

As many of you know, my husband is colorblind. He considers it his only party trick, but I know there are times he wishes he could see the intricacies and vibrancy in color that everyone else around him experiences. So I bought him a set of EnChroma glasses, which aid in filtering color perception for people with colorblindness, often allowing them to experience certain hues for the first time. I was expecting them to blow his mind.

Unfortunately, the glasses did not end up doing as much as I'd hoped. While certain things, like his plaid shirts, registered as noticeably different, it was more of a "Huh, that's kind of cool. This shirt looks less dull than usual" and not a tearful "Green! I can see green! Look at this shirt! Have you ever seen a more wonderful shirt in all creation?!" Most things looked more or less the same. Sadly, we ultimately ended up returning the glasses at the end of the trial period because we just couldn't justify the price tag for the little they did for his specific condition.
{end detour}

3.+4. Long view and closeup of the party decorations. I splurged on every bright and colorful thing I could find, hoping to give him plenty of fodder for his new glasses to soak in: multi-colored paper stars, paper streamers, a hot pink princess tablecloth, rainbow candles, two different Happy Birthday banners, a hoard of balloons, and a generous smattering of dice. Even though the glasses didn't work out, we had fun pelting each other with balloons for the next few weeks.

[pen and marker drawing of a green plateosaurus saying "Hi!"]

A dumb joke photoshop I made for my husband of a screenshot from Mega Man 10 enhanced with additional Spikes/Spykes and a Megaman-branded light bulb.

References include Rugrats, Buffy, Cowboy Bebop, Spike TV, Spike Lee, X-Men: Evolution, Tom and Jerry, Space Quest V, The Land Before Time, and Dick Tracy.

Last week I did a shout-out on the Facebook page asking for suggestions of what to draw next.  I received this response from E. A. Baker of Can't Stop a Squirtle - "A yoshi with different footwear than boots. Like if a bunch of them went out shoe shopping or something."  
This morning I logged onto my computer and saw an article listing 25 shoe designs from Milan Fashion Week.
I decided to draw Yoshi modelling actual footwear designs from Milan (Alberta Ferretti, Byblos, and Alberto Zambelli), modified to reflect various characters from the Mario Bros. franchise (Toadette, Yoshi, and Luigi, respectively).

Any other suggestions on what to draw this week?

This was a direct response to an article I read about the changing perception of dinosaurs over the years.  It started with the original idea that all dinosaurs were earth-toned and scaly, moved on to scientists' discovery that many dinosaurs were vividly colourful, and ended with all of the current research on dinosaurs and feathers.  The article was accented with several vintage artistic recreations of how dinosaurs may have looked, and some of them were downright ridiculous in light of modern data.

Lord of the Rings' Sauron + dinosaurs =

I decided over the winter to give my husband some old-fashioned cutout snowflakes.  I thought it would be fun to leave them folded so that he could have the joy of opening them himself.  Here is what he found in his lunch:

He immediately decided they were dinosaur sculptures to be displayed on his desk, so he never unfolded them:

I had to tell him they were actually snowflakes.  I think he was disappointed...

This pun, it doesn't work.  At all.  Who let me try and write puns at 7:30 in the morning?  Who?  (And what about this poor thing's anatomy?  That is truly a crime against art.)

Y is also for "Yes, I did mess up the perspective in this drawing big time."  I wanted to depict a group of the various Yoshis from the Mario franchise, but it kind of (more than kind of) looked like they were badly collaged on top of one another.  So I put in platforms at the bottom to add depth, and to make up for the fact that the left one was hovering in mid-air.  Because somehow I thought that would help...

At the time I drew this, I honestly didn't realize that I had already used this pun once before.  (You may remember this same dinosaur appeared back on Day 22.)  Since my husband hordes these notes in his office at work, I have a hard time remembering what I have and have not drawn.  I only noticed the duplication this past November when I was bulk scanning 188 lunch notes onto my computer in preparation for starting this blog.