Best Christmas Gift Ever

With Christmas upon us and in my efforts to minimalize my life this year I stumped my family, they had no idea what to get me now that I have pared down all of my belongings.  I am fortunately at a point that I can make a little bit of cash go a long way so I had a very lucrative Christmas which will help me finish up my house!

That wasn’t good enough for Nate though, the following is the trail to my Christmas gift from Nate.  I have to say, it was the funnest gift I’ve ever received and that war is on… I will definitely be stealing this idea for Nate’s gifts in the future, the more ridiculous the better!!

[New family tradition?? I think so]  Thank you Nate!

I unwrapped it to find a glass jar with a box wrapped in duct tape.

Pull it out and see this. Nathan then tosses me a calculator followed by, 'you'll need this' and informs me that 'there is a drill on the fridge'

Unwrapped and this is where the drill comes in... We had family who thought it was pretty creative to go this far to hide a gift card... but its not even close to the end.

Unscrewed it and here is my first clue: 'I don't go out and play I just stay home all day. I'm nice, you might agree, but mostly your feet just rub me...' After some consuling with the family we determined it must be a door mat... So off I was to look!

At the doormat was my next clue with a key taped to it. 'Some take me in the morning, others take me in the evening, but one thing you should know is that when I'm taken I don't really go anywhere'. Now my first thoght was vitamins, which only sorta makes sense, Dan, his thought was 'Maps' which I am still trying to make sense of ;). Eventually we determined it was a shower... so off I went to check the showers!

Sitting in the shower was this series of locks. I took the key from the door mat and was able to open one and pull off a sheet of paper.

In the sheet of paper was a series of math equations that had the code to the rotating lock... My glorified art degree ended up being just enough to get me through (even though I can pick these locks pretty easily, AND I'm pretty sure its the same lock that Nate had in High School, which I kinda remembered the code to 🙂

Vala! After undoing the lock there were a series of washers with a number on one side and a word on the other. I but them in numerical order and then flipped them over for my next clue...

'What is higher without the head then with it?' (the rest were just to fill up the lock 🙂 )

The clue. This one was tough, I was thinking screws and things but I overthought it... it's a pillow we determined!

So, I checked a few pillows and then found this lockbox which the key from the lock fit

Inside, yet another clue! 'My words number quite many (like pen, pent, and penny); My title you will discover is explained under my cover'. I knew this immediately to be a dictionary but we don't really have a place that we keep a dictionary except under the table right beside me where it has sat since the last time it was used, years ago!

Nate had replaced this with his dictionary safe which I was then able to get into with another key which was included with the last clue.

And inside was a gift card. Nate said it was a boring gift so he had to spice it up. It was awesome, totally loved the game of it and working together on it as a family! Very VERY cool gift idea, thanks Nater!