In an effort to clean up my apartment and get rid of unnecessary things, I finally took apart my "origami farm/replica apartment made of cash" that my friends built me for my 33rd birthday. It was the sweetest thing ever -- we don't celebrate my birthday often because we're usually all traveling for the holidays, but this year they made a special effort to put together this amazingly involved and touchingly personal birthday party. It was such a surprise that when I got to my friends' apartment and looked around at the decorations, I thought, hmmm...Mike & Marg must've had a birthday party for a child...I wonder who it was? And I saw my sister crouched in the kitchen in surprise birthday party mode and thought to myself, hmmm...that's weird. What's she doing here? And why's she crouching near the floor like that? They had Hello Kitty decorations which made me think of a small child (I didn't have the heart to tell everyone that I wasn't into Hello Kitty nearly as much as my ex was), and I so fully believed Ed's story about why I was over there (though the story did strike me as being slightly weird) that I wasn't the least bit suspicious.

Anyway, that was over 2 and a half months ago but I haven't had the heart to rip apart the gift they all collaborated on. In the tradition of the very personal, German folded money gifts, they made me an apartment out of origami money. With an origami farm to top it off. It is beautiful (view all the origami pics).

Taking it apart was harder than I thought it would be -- it's not easy stripping off hard glue and double stick tape. I was staring at one bill trying to think of how I'd explain to someone why Abraham Lincoln's forehead was peeled off the bill. Well, he was folded up into a chair and glued to a fake carpet.