At Sixes and Sevens

My friend turned six a couple of weeks ago.  Where do the time go?  (I'm certain his mother is saying the same thing.)

Their family is in the transition of moving. Moving is a monumental task for everybody.  I don't care how many times you've moved or how organized you are, it is never easy. 

I wanted to send him something for his birthday, but knowing their family is in this transition, I didn't want to send something that would have to packed up.  (Ok, I was thinking more about his mom in this case.)  I wanted something small to send through the mail.  Something related to him being six years old. 

I had nothing.

Two days before his birthday, and still no good ideas on the horizon, I took a phone call from a staff member on campus looking for a particular font to use for a poster. 

I found her font in my fonts folder and lots of other cool fonts I never get to use.  Most of my correspondence is via email, so I have the opportunity to use the cool, creative styles, but in the professional world, you don't have the opportunity.  It doesn't look very professional when you write an email like this:

At least not in my department.  (I SO want to work in a department/field where this would be acceptable.) My boss would be all over that in a flash.  He refuses to take anybody seriously if they use a font other than straight laced and serious.  We won't get into his neurosis right now.

This one would be fun too:

 
After looking at all of these cool fonts, I knew I had to do something related to 6s for the birthday boy.  I printed out a bunch of large 6s in all different fonts and started cutting around all of the edges of the 6s. 

If I started a year earlier, I might have had them all cut out by the time he was 7.  Cutting around all of the curves of the fancy fonts was slowing down the cutting progress.  Simpler.  Must be simpler.  Squares.  Straight cuts.  Easy. 

Then I found a slightly heavier weight yellow paper in my office.  Bright Yellow. Now we're getting somewhere.  I used 4 different colors, but kept the size of the card the same size.  A few minutes and a lot of fonts later, I had 80 squares with a big 6 in the middle of each.

Now what.  Now what.  Now what.

I need a different color paper.  So now I have two stacks of the exact same 6s on different color papers.  I just created a matching game!  Match the pattern or match the colors.  Off to the paper cutter I go. 

My office is across the hall from the Education Faculty.  The paper cutter is in the faculty mailroom.  As I was cutting out the sixes, one of the professors stopped.  She's an early education professor.  She said, 'Wait a minute.  This looks like a project I would be working on, not a project our tech support would be working on.'  Hmmmm, maybe I need to peak in her office for more ideas.


Here's the finished project in action.  The birthday boy and his brother loved it. 

By the way, I have 941 fonts in my fonts folder.  I use 2 on a regular basis.

Also, here is a quick history of the term "at sixes and sevens":

This expression is commoner in the UK and Commonwealth countries than in the US. It can mean something that’s in a state of total confusion or disarray, or people who are collectively in a muddle or at loggerheads about how to deal with some situation.