Mary's Pea Pod Baby Shower Invitations

A few months ago, an old friend named Mary came to me to see if I could design some baby shower invites for her. She is one of those super cute pregnant girls and her and her husband are about to have a little baby boy. 

Mary said that she thought lime green and pea pods would make for a cute shower invitation. I immediately agreed, especially because I think that having a boy doesn't necessarily have to equal all things blue. Here's what we came up with. 

Mary's super athletic - a runner, works out, all that good stuff. The green banner just seemed to fit her more than something baby-ish or floral or vintage. Luckily, she thought so, too.

Font throughout the invitation is Hero Light - a recent fave.

So there you have it. A cute invite for a super cute - and easy to work with - pregnant lady. :)

I'm guessing a lot of you are heading out to enjoy Labor Day weekend - have fun! I'll be back next week to continue on with some of this summer's wedding invitations. See you then. :)

Trish and Dave's Save the Dates

You may remember Trish. I worked with her back when I did her business cards. Well, get used to seeing this lady, because she has a wedding coming up later this year and I've been working on several fun projects for it.

First up are her Save the Dates. Trish basically wanted something very simple over a super sweet picture of her and her fiancé. I think we accomplished this mission.

I LOVE the picture Trish ended up using. Trish is an avid lover of all things Detroit and so when it came time for the proposal, her fiancé planned to do it downtown at Hart Plaza. The picture we used is one that his friend snapped right as Dave was bringing out his guitar to sing a song to Trish before he proposed.

Fonts are (in the order they appear):

BD Hanover
CAC Champagne
Railway Thin
Novecento Wide

(I got a little crazy up in hurrrr with the fonts.)

I love that the save the date is simple so it doesn't take away from the picture.

Trisha used the loveliest color for her envelopes - Envelopment's persimmon, a nice coral-y color.

We are so not done with Trish and Dave yet. A shower invite, their wedding invite, and some wedding extras will all be showing up in the months to come. 

And please, go read the whole story behind Dave's proposal here on Trish's Kitty Haw Vintage blog and check out Kitty Haw Vintage here on Etsy.

Team World Vision Postcards

Happy FRIIIIII-DAAAAYYY (said like Oprah). 

So, I'm trying to knock out some blog posts on these side projects that I've been doing this summer. I'll be back next week with more (a save the date and a baby shower invite, to be exact), but for now I just wanted to show off a personal project of mine. 

As I've mentioned before, this is the year of the marathon. Which means that the following things are now common in my life:

1. Going to bed at 8 PM on Friday nights in preparation for 6 AM group runs on Saturday mornings (my husband is so pleased). 

2. Thinking I can eat everything in sight because I'm running (thus, I have lost 0 pounds even though we're up to running 10+ miles on the weekends). 

3. Bumming everyone out on every vacation I've taken this summer because I'm like, "oh, by the way, RUN WITH ME."

Overall though, training has been going well so far, meaning that I haven't had any injuries and I've managed to complete each run on my training schedule without dying. But tomorrow is my longest run yet (and I mean my longest run ever) at 15 miles. And I'm really really nervous. Like, already feeling a total uneasiness in my stomach nervous. And it's still 16 hours away. 

But the only reason I know that I can do it is because I'm running with Team World Vision. I signed up with them because I knew it would be great to have so many other runners running with me, but also because I knew that if I was going to make it a whole 26.2 miles, I was going to need to do it for a cause. 

So I signed up and I started the process of raising money, which meant that I did nothing for close to half of my marathon training. BUT the reason I did that was because before I asked people to donate, I really wanted to make sure that I was going to do this thing. And considering I'm at the 15 mile point in training, I'm hoping that people see that I'm serious. 

So I designed a little postcard and sent it out this past week. 

When I first signed up with World Vision, I asked the head of our running group how $50.00 ends up providing clean water for a person for life. It's because World Vision goes in and drills wells, or rehabilitates them if they're in poor condition. When they have clean water, a lot of good things happen (look to the postcard, people!).

So instead of a form letter (like in olden times), I thought I'd come up with a quick, concise little postcard to send to people to let them know what was going on and what I was doing it for. Here's the back.

So my obsession with postcards continues...I'm working on my Thank You for the Referral postcard right now, just so I can have another one to print out.

Next week I'll be back with the aforementioned save the date and baby shower invite and I might even throw in a random summer wrap up post, just for kicks. Until then, enjoy your weekend and please, stay out later than 8 PM tonight, for me. :)

Want to check out other postcards from Vivian Elle? Go here, here, here, and here.

Ashley's Hostess Only Party Postcards

Ashley falls into two categories:

1. Family
2. Savvy business women that are so very inspiring

You've seen Ashley before here when I did a hostess brunch for her last year. She works in direct sales for Premier Designs (you can see her FB page here) and she has worked her business this past year and kept getting hostesses and so the annual hostess only party needed to continue (it is annual, after all).

This year, she basically said she wanted teal and black and chevron and polka dots. Here's what we came up with.

Do I use any excuse to pull out the Samantha Script font? Oh, yes I do. The block font is Hero Light. 

Here's the back. You'll have to excuse the fact that it did go through the mail (I sent these directly to Ashley, so she sent me one so I could see how they turned out).

So that's it. Chevron/polka dots/teal/black - I think we got it all in there.

I can't say enough about how much I love postcards. They are so easy - so much so that I'll be back tomorrow with a bonus Friday post to show off some postcards I made for myself. See you then!

Want to check out other postcards from Vivian Elle? Go here, here, here, and here.

Brittney's Wedding Shower Invitations

I'm in love with this invite and I don't care who knows it (I would say name that movie, but please...we all know it). 

Izzy is a friend that my husband and I have played volleyball with for a few years now. We play on a competitive league in the winter and let me just be frank - we are pretty bad. But our team is so much fun and we go out every night after our games, win or lose, and have a great time together. 

So a few months after our season ended this year, I was delighted to get an email from Izzy asking if I could help her out with some shower invitations. Her sister-in-law was getting married and she was heading up the shower festivities. 

Izzy wasn't too picky about what she wanted so I was able to play around a bit (which is always fun). Here's what we came up with.

I thought it might be fun to do a little custom monogram for Brittney and her fiancé. I used some artwork from Envelopments and was able to come up with a lovely, free monogram for the married couple-to-be.

The font for Brittney's name is Clarendon Bold Condensed. The rest is Context Reprise Light.

We also did a custom designed envelope.  Such a perfect way to give the guests a preview of what's inside. :) 

The color scheme of this invitation is one of my favorites and I loved working with Izzy in the off-season (you know, when we're working out hard and getting our volleyball game ready for winter league - totally untrue). 

I do hope you all are enjoying these last days of summer. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things this week, and one of the things I want to do is show you some side projects that I've been working on this summer. So this week will be a mini-side project extravaganza if you will and I'll be back on Thursday to show you another one I've been working on. :) 

Greg and Erin's Formal Wedding Invitations

Erin and Gregory came to me a few months ago wanting help with their wedding invitations. Erin was a bridesmaid in this wedding and just like her friend, Erin wanted a formal, classic wedding invitation. She wanted to keep it simple - black and white, with no color. 

Here's what we came up with. 

 

For me, this invitation's main feature is the script font - Adios Script Pro. How amazing is the swirl on the 'h' in Elizabeth?

We backed the actual invitation with black linen card stock. The invite itself was a metallic ecru. 

Again, can we marvel at the beautiful font?

Look at those swashes (yes, this is the technical term, I looked it up). Love love love love love love love.

That's it. Simple. Traditional. Beautiful.

I'll be back next week with some shower invitations for you and then we'll continue on with the wedding hoopla. See you then. :)

Marriage

Fear not, my friends - this is most definitely not a post that will include me giving any type of advice on marriage. My husband and I have been married four years today. We're still new at this. We just bought our first house a little over a year ago. Luke just finished his first year of teaching. I am working on this business which is relatively new. There is still a lot of newness in our marriage.

Before I was married, I overanalyzed marriage to death. I was afraid of giving up my independence. I was afraid of committing my life to someone else. I was afraid that one day, one of us would wake up and think, "I just don't love you anymore."

And now that I've been married for just a little bit of time, I wanted to take a second to write down how I feel after four years.

To put it bluntly - marriage has exceeded my expectations in every way.

This doesn't mean that I don't get so angry at Luke sometimes that I just want to drop kick him in the face. Because I do. Ask any of our close friends or family - they've seen us at our not so finest moments.

But the part where I get to share each and every part of my life with a guy that I adore has been pretty great. And the part where I get to be 100% fully myself with him even though there's no one else in the world that would laugh at what we're laughing at is pretty great, too.

And the thing that I've loved most about it all is how incredibly normal it is. I love when we're just sitting on the couch at night, watching TV, sometimes with both laptops open on our laps. I love the times we take a walk together or just go out for dinner because I don't want to cook or lay in bed at night and watch a TV show to fall asleep to. I love that we just enjoy everyday normal life together.

As our anniversary has approached, I've been thinking a lot about marriage. If someone asked me for advice on marriage after four short years, I would probably laugh. And then if they were serious, I might say, "ummm...make sure you communicate?"

The truth is, I have a lot longer to go before I would ever offer anyone advice on marriage. But I love my marriage. Every little imperfect bit of it. Mostly because somehow, four years ago now, I made a really really good choice when I said "I do" to Luke.

I have our wedding vows framed in our guest room. A few weeks ago I took some time to look at them again. My dad wrote them - being that he is such a good writer, we gladly let him take the task of writing our vows from us and I've never regretted it. And I just wanted to have them documented here. As I read them, I am just struck by how very normal they are.

Luke and I will never be famous. We probably won't travel the world or achieve any kind of success as the world might define it. But we vowed to live really normal lives side by side four years ago today, and I'm so glad we did.

Luke, having already taken you as my friend,
I now take you as my husband and lifelong companion
and promise to give myself wholeheartedly to you alone,
to cherish you alone,
to love and honor you,
to protect and support you in everything you do,
to enjoy your presence for the rest of my life,

to celebrate your gifts,
to ease your burden,
to encourage you,
to dream with you,
to laugh and cry with you,
to abide with you,
to reserve for you the full measure of my devotion, commitment, and love,

and to remember that whatever 

I may accomplish in life, 

none of it compares

with the excellence of being your wife.