Melissa's Moving Announcements

OK, because I just decided to make next week a Week of Thankfulness (after seeing this blog), I am going to do my Fall To-Do List round up this week. Wait for it...

But first, a little moving announcement I've been working on.

If you've kept up with this blog at all, you would know Melissa by this point. If you haven't, or you just need a reminder, go here and here.  This girl loves her paper products, and I'm fortunate enough to be the one she comes to for them. 

So when her family moved, she needed a way to announce their new address to everyone. She had the great idea of making a postcard and she wanted to keep it simple with just a basic black lettering and artwork on white card stock. Here's what we came up with.

I'm kind of enamored with that house. I can say this and it's not arrogant because it's not anything I designed. Envelopments has a ton of artwork that I'm lucky enough to have access to. So on the front we thought we'd announce their new address (I'm getting better at taking the address out, huh?!), list their names, and put that cute little house in there.

Mel found this little rhyme and we used that for the back. I need to stop here to say that I absolutely love the cursive-ish font. It's Channel and you can grab it for free here if you'd like. 

I just love working with Melissa. She's so creative herself, but very open to new ideas. 

And guess what? I'm currently working on yet another project for her. Because when you buy a house, you need to have a housewarming party, right?  So stayed tuned for her beautiful (seriously, I love them so much just based on the papers she chose) housewarming party invites. 

OK, now on to the Fall To-Do List Round-up. 

Here is the completed list. 

Some things weren't done. Though I should mention that I did buy the fabric to re-cover the lamp shade, but just haven't done it yet (maybe over Thanksgiving break). I am also still in the process of finding hardware that actually fits my vanity. Everything I see is just a little too small and it's making me think that they don't make 4" hardware anymore. That might be permanently off the to-do list. 

Also, I only showed gratitude in a unique way once. :( My husband was the recipient and I just put sticky notes with reasons I love him in a heart on the bathroom wall (it's always nice to have something to read in there, right?). He really liked it, but believe me...I know I could have kicked it up a notch on that one. Thus the reason for it not being crossed off.  

A couple of notes on certain accomplished items.

1. Grow a pumpkin for Halloween and decorate it.

I did grow a pumpkin for Halloween. However, it was small. Very small. But did I still carve it for Halloween? Of course. See below. 

There's the little guy. Kind of pitiful, but I love him still (yes, the pumpkin is clearly a boy). I had to surgically removed a nubbin from the back of him in an attempt to help him stand by himself. It did not work.

However, you may notice that my Fall To-Do List said that I needed to decorate my pumpkins. Since I was not about to decorate that little thing for my porch decorations, I bought pumpkins instead and decorated them. 

And of course, took no pictures. 

But if you want to get a feel for what I did, I took my inspiration from Young House Love. And yes, what I did involves puffy paints. Cue 80s music, please. Here is YHL's pic...mine were similar-ish.

Puffy Paint + Spray Paint + pumpkins = my favorite Halloween pumpkins ever. I did a spider, an H, and swirls, and then I spray painted two of them grey and the remaining one red. The reason for this was because those were the spray paints I already had in our house. Did I get asked if we were Ohio State fans? Yes.

That's a lot of talk about pumpkins. Let's move on.

2. Make our wedding vows into a canvas.

OK, the canvas idea did not happen. It didn't happen because making the canvas involved printing on tissue paper. However, my heavy duty printer pretty much annihilated the tissue paper so I had to change my plan. Luckily, I saw this awesome idea from a picture my sis-in-law pinned. I had to go with it. Here's the original pin from Sparkle and Hay.

And here's how mine turned out.

I really wanted to do two frames with vows specific to each of us. I just loved the thought of having these up in our house (yes, they found a home on a shelf and are no longer sitting on the floor). This was easily my favorite thing that I crossed off my to-do list. 

3. Make my own Carmel Apple Spice.

Carmel Apple Spice is a drink from Starbucks. I learned how to make it because I (again) found a link from Pinterest. Just look at that fall goodness... 

So good. So so so good. You can find all you need to make it (it's super easy) here. 

4. Bake an Apple Pie. 

OK, this is not done....yet. But I will be bringing a pie to my in-laws on Saturday and it will be this pie. So I therefore have cause to prematurely cross this one off the list.

It's a Paula Deen. I love that woman. Here's what it looks like.

I made this last year and it's a good one. I can't wait to try it out again. You can find the recipe here. 

5. Go to Bed by 11PM Each (Week)Night and Take a Nap Once a Week.

It's just worth noting that these were by far the most beneficial things to me this past month. Not always easy to do, but so worth it. 

To end this fall to-do list post, I wanted to share a picture of Luke and I in Chicago this last weekend. It was taken by my best friend of 17 years (yes, we calculated this while we were there), Amy Sayre (who you may have heard of a million other times on my blog).  I just feel like these will always be my favorite fall photos. I'm using these for our Christmas cards, but thought there was no harm in putting just one out on the internet early. 

So now on to Thanksgiving week, or a Week of Thankfulness here on this blog. I've asked some of my closest family and friends to share their gratitude with you and I can't wait to share what they've come up with. It's been a lot of fun already collecting their thoughts. Really, I just can't wait to share them with you in general. They're kind of great, you know.

Stay tuned next week for a daily (gasp!) post on my blog in honor of Thanksgiving!

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post.