This year, Daan & I have been together for 20 years (!), of which 5 years of marriage (yep, it’s serious). We celebrated with a great weekend away with friends (Fleur & Fabian, celebrating their five year anniversary – starting point: our marriage :)). I thought it would be nice to give Daan something special that would last and be about us, and came up with the idea of a portrait of the two of us. Given the reason (love, relationship) and the idea of a portrait itself (potentially cheesy), the execution of the idea was crucial, but luckily there was Ellen de Bruijn! She’s an illustrator from Utrecht whose work I knew from Puha Shop. I pushed her a bit into drawing somewhat more iconic than she usually does (sorry Ellen!), but we are both so happy with the result. On a detailed level: on the background there are silhouettes of the water and old factory and water toren opposite our house. There is us sitting on/in front of the couch (our way of spending an evening in front of the tv) (hey, I said the execution of a romantic idea through a potentially cheesy concept was crucial!) and on the carpet there are references to Rosa and Oscar (remember their rose / anchor birth cards?). The final sketch was turned into a screenprint (done by We are out of office, also from Utrecht), which was framed by Catch. It took me more than 2 months of not telling anything to Daan (the hard part ;)), but that was worth it: Daan loved the gift + could not be more surprised. Ellen, thanks again!