Our Semi-DIY Invites Revealed

We sent out our invites over the weekend and are pretty sure that most everyone has gotten there's by now.  We I wanted the invites to incorporate the colors and some crane action.  We ended up buying and designing the invites and the response card from mygatsby.com.  The website cards came from vistaprint.com and the belly bands are made with love by yours truly.   When the invites arrived in the mail they were nice enough but a little on the plain side.  To save money, we decided not to go with the envelope liners, not to do an inner envelope and not to use more than one color on the invites and inserts.  (Yep, that's why the address on the return envelopes is purple) So, to jazz them up I decided to incorporate the crane with the belly bands.  I was introduced to the idea of belly bands  on weddingbee.com one of the sites I spend entirely too much time on while planning this wedding.  I had lots of the materials already from my card crafting adventures (I already owned the paper punches and the paper trimmer/cutter) so I just needed some fun and fancy card stock from michaels and some double sided tape.  In the beginning I was super creative with the different bands and was making all sorts of neat ones for everyone but by the end and in a rush to just get them out, most everyone's started looking pretty much the same.  My other big DIY for the invites was the address label.  Initially, I was going to hand write all of the addresses.  I thought that my handwriting was neat enough to suffice and it would be the quickest and easiest way since I knew I was not planning on paying a calligrapher to do the work.  Spending even more time on the internets, I came across the wrap-around label and knew that's what I would do.  I bought some half sheet labels from Office Depot (they were cheaper than the full page labels) and designed the labels in Microsoft Publisher. I google image searched "paper crane" and found the drawing I liked and added them to the label.  Printed them in my crappy inkjet printer, sliced and diced them to size with my paper cutter and voila!  All in all, it was a fun crafting experience that hopefully gave a personal touch to our invite package. 

And now to the big reveal.....

....Which one did you get?  Could I have done something more/better?  Are you super curious to how cranes will be incorporated in the wedding?  (I'm super curious too!)  What about those stupid american flag stamps -- how do those fit with the whole motif? (haha.....my bad, next time I will plan a trip to the post office instead of picking up stamps at the grocery store on memorial day weekend :)

Socks

I'm one of those people who wears socks to bed.  And to sit on the couch. And to cook in the kitchen.  My feet are always cold and socks seem to solve the problem pretty well.  The socks I wear only sometimes seem to match and I have a bad habit of leaving them in piles all over the apartment. And you know what?  It drives me crazy to see piles of socks all over the apartment.  Funny, huh?

Do you/someone you know have any strange habits that drive you bonkers?  Are you a wearer of socks?  Socks in bed?  I can't be the only one.

And they're out!

Sorry I haven't been updating the blog.  I've got a lot of posts in the queue but haven't been able to finish and post them because assembling wedding invitations has taken up all my time.  But they are out!  I won't reveal them yet because we just dropped them in the mail today. 

We sent one to the prez.  You think he'll come???

little grey hairs

Excuse the mess of hair for a minute and look carefully.  Do you see that little grey hair standing up tall? The one saluting me like I've just returned from war?  It's one of a whole herd of them that hang out on top of my head every day.  A real kind and bunch, they are.  You know, the kind that are always around.  They hang out on the stoop when the curls are flowing and wild and wear neon sneakers to stand out (like all the cool kids do) when the hair is sleek and straight.  They loiter around on my best of days and make noise all night on my worst of days.  They are even kind of enough to greet me every morning, every day, and every night.

I question whether I should get rid of them all.  At least temporarily shoo them away so that I can forget that despite having a young face, I'm not quite as young as I once was.  At times, I think I should pluck them all out but then I fear plucking them all and losing all of my hair.  So, for now, they can stay with me.

Happy Birthday Month

Do you know what today is?  It's the first day of May.  Do you know what that means?  It's my birthday month!  And though my birthday isn't until the 20th, it's never too early to start celebrating me :)

Many of you already know that my birthday is my favorite holiday of the year.  One day, if you are nice to me, I will figure out how to get you the day off work.  This year is a particularly special birthday (aka, the one where i'm getting way too old to still love my birthday this damn much).  Anyhow, I've been fishing around the idea of getting back on facebook for the month of May to beg for birthday wishes reconnect with some old friends.

As you may have figured out, no post is complete without a picture.

See?  DSW and Movado know what's up :)

Now, go let me know if I should get back on Facebook for the month.  Oh, and leave a comment wishing me a happy birthday already.  Geez!

greeting cards a la moi

To start, I actually don't know any french.  So I'm not sure if that title works or makes sense.  But it sounds good and that's all that matters.  Back on topic, when I left my last job, I agreed with a colleague that we'd become pen pals.  With that, we started writing notes back and forth over the summer.  She had all sorts of cute stationary and I had some blank folded cards.  Eventually to be more cutesy, I added stickers to my cards and thus spurned my new hobby of card making.  While I'm totally new to the game, and totally borrow ideas from the interwebs, I find card crafting quite fun.  Some of the cards I've made are okay and some are better than okay.  I'm not "trained" in any techniques of yet but I do watch some youtube videos from time to time.  The most difficult part of it all is that it actually can get quite expensive.  But I'm going to keep trying to get better before I buy too many more items.  Any way, below are some of the cards I've created.  Just like everything else, one gets better by practice, so I imagine I'll post more about this hobby in the future as I continue to grow in my skill.

1001 Purple Cranes

I'm on a mission to make 1000+ purple cranes for my wedding this summer.  At first it seemed like a big endeavor (and I suppose it still does) but slowly I'm folding lots and lots of cranes and moving closer and closer to 1000.  I'm not entirely sure what will be done with all the cranes at the wedding but I'm looking forward to being creative and incorporating them in different ways.  

In many Asian cultures, cranes symbolize long life (they are said to live a 1000 years) happiness and peace.  They also symbolize fidelity because they choose a mate for life. 







In Japan, the practice of folding 1,000 cranes for ones wedding is called sembazuru. The tradition itself is called Tsuru wa sennen. It's said that the couple that could dedicate the time and patience to fold the thousand origami cranes proves their ability to maintain a long term, content relationship.









And with that, back to crane folding I must go.