5th Anniversary Gift Ideas: Wood and the Story You Built

Wood, and the things you've built

Wood may be the easiest anniversary material to love, because by now you've probably built something out of it: a bookshelf assembled on the living room floor, a crib, a fence, a deck you swore would take one weekend.

At five years, the gift usually goes from one of you to the other, though small kids sometimes get roped in as accomplices. Wood gifts that pair well with a song:

• A wood frame for the printed lyrics. The centerpiece, covered in detail below.
• A cutting board from a local woodworker with your house number burned into it. For the couple who cooks in that kitchen every night.
• A small wooden keepsake box. For the wedding cards, the key to your first place, the hospital bracelets, whatever five years left behind.
• A tree for the yard. If the place is yours now, plant something that will still be there at year twenty-five.

What five years usually hold

A fifth anniversary is about decisions. By now you've likely made a few big ones together: where to live, whether to move for a job, when to start a family, what to do with the spare room. Each one changed the shape of your life, and together they make a good backbone for a song.

Say you started in a one-bedroom above a laundromat, moved across the state for her job in year three, and bought a house with a yellow door the spring your son was born. That's a song already: three places, two moves, one yellow door, one new name.

If kids came along, decide early how much of the song belongs to them. One song can hold several names, and a line about the first night home from the hospital might be the one that undoes your partner. Still, this is your anniversary. Keep the kids as part of the story the two of you are telling, not the whole of it.

And if the five years held something hard, like a lost job, a stretch of long distance or a parent who got sick, you can name it gently or leave it out. Put it in only if your partner would be glad to hear it sung.

Five years, five questions

Gathering five years of details goes faster with one question per year. Open your photos from each year and answer them in order. Don't worry yet about which ones end up in the song.

1. Year one: Where did you live, and what was the first thing you bought for it together?
2. Year two: What did a normal weekend look like? Name the place you went or the thing you always did.
3. Year three: What changed? A job, a move, a dog, the car that finally died on the highway.
4. Year four: When did you watch your partner handle something hard, and what did they do?
5. Year five: What does home look like right now? One room, one sound, one habit.

Then add three things that run through all five years:

• A nickname, and where it came from.
• The album that followed you from place to place.
• One thing they do for you that nobody ever asked them to do.

The questions are a guide, not a rule. If year three was the year everything happened, give it two answers and let a quiet year go. You'll end up with more than one song can hold, and choosing the best four or five is what makes it yours.

Pick the sound by what plays in your kitchen on a Saturday morning. Country and Acoustic suit a song about a home and the people in it; Pop or R&B suit a lighter one. Choose the era your partner's music lives in, or Timeless.

Framing the lyric artwork in wood

The lyric artwork comes with your song as a digital file. You print it and choose the wood, which means the frame can match the home the song is about.

• Match the wood to the house. Look at the floors, the kitchen table or the bookshelf the frame will hang near. Oak, walnut and maple all frame a print well; pick the one that already lives in your rooms.
• Consider wood with a past. If you replaced an old fence, a door or floorboards, ask a framer whether a frame can be cut from the boards you saved. It puts the house itself into the gift.
• Burn or carve the date on the back. Your wedding date and the address of the house, where only the two of you will see it.
• Leave room for a photo. A double frame holds the lyrics on one side and a picture from the day you got the keys on the other.
• Give the framer time. Custom framing can take a week or more, so take the print in as soon as you have it.

Hang it somewhere you both pass every day, like the hallway or above the dresser. A song about a home belongs on its walls.

Giving it with a full house

A fifth anniversary often comes with less free time than the first one did. Plan the moment around your life as it is now.

• After bedtime. Once the house is quiet, set the frame on the table, pour two glasses of something, and play the song before they notice the frame.
• With a small accomplice. A child old enough to keep a secret can carry the wrapped frame in. Then send them off, so your partner can listen without an audience.
• On a night away. If you've booked a sitter and a hotel, pack the print flat in a folder and bring a small speaker.
• At the front door. If the house is the heart of the song, hang the frame just inside the entrance before they get home.

Five years, written down and framed

Bring your five answers and the three threads. The quiz takes about three minutes and asks who the song is for, the occasion, what your partner is like, your memories and a short dedication, then the genre, era and voice. We write their song from your answers.

Add a photo of the two of you on the front step, and your Only Happy Tears anniversary song comes with a portrait made of the lyrics, a second print for the wood frame. Pay only when you love it. When your answers are ready, start your fifth anniversary song.