Natalie's 40th Friends and Family SURPRISE Gift

Hi Everyone.

Thank you all so much for your kind contributions. I believe we may end up with a little more than is needed depending on the frame Natalie chooses. She is incredibly humbled and thankful. I had expected to have to make a larger top up contribution over and above an initial anonymous donation I threw in the pot to get things going so I will also include you as contributors to something else that will be coming soon.

I replaced the previous pictures with images from the evening and I included a video of Nat getting her gift. I showed her a series of postcards with things we thought about getting her as a group gift but due to the amount that was raised the gift kept getting better. The last postcard was a picture of the Monkman image she loves. This is where the video starts. Nat was so happy and genuinely shocked that she jumped for joy on her bad ankle.

I spoke with Kent's representative's and I believe that we should be able to get the copy of his latest work signed once he returns to Toronto. I will fill you in on the framing choices etc... later this week.

Thank you once again for helping to make Natalie's Day so special.

Darryl

* Side note there was a large card that I made that you can see in one of the pictures. Your names were added to in on Saturday but your messages are being printed and glued to it today. Please excuse my delay in getting all of your messages onto the card there was a lot of things happening and the making the card took me a little longer than I thought.

** THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE LOVE AND POSITIVE ENERGY!!! I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW APPRECIATED IT WAS.

I look forward to meeting you all in person if I haven't already.

*PLEASE SEND ME A MESSAGE TO INCLUDE IN HER CARD. ([email protected]) OR YOU CAN WRITE A COMMENT ON MESSAGE ON THIS WALL.

WE DID IT! Thank you all for your contributions. Sorry for the slow update. Nat has been injured so I've become a bit of a Butler.

I hope to grab the Monkman today. Either way we will do a presentation to Nat and give her the Monkman book that she's wanted for a long time.

Just a short update on the visit to the gallery on Wednesday. The Monkman is not at the gallery but there was one bird piece the gallery owner also remembers Nat completely loving Pitaloosie Saila "Bird in Morning Mist". If there's any issues with the Monkman we can get her that and any excess can go toward Nat's latest desire/buying a kayak.

I'll update the general pics on the main page which you can scroll through accordingly. A gallery price list is included for transparency.

I will also do another update and send you images of our "Presentation".

Thank you once again!

I will be going to the gallery tomorrow (Wednesday). I will post ideas based on my conversation with the gallery owner who Nat spoke with extensively.

Please feel free to share with anyone who may want to contribute I likely won't pick up the piece until Saturday morning and will allow Nat to be involved in the framing choices as I was told that would take a few weeks.