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. 

Andréa and Isac's Wedding Invitations

Andréa (how happy am I that I finally learned how to add that accent over the 'e'?) came to me a couple of months ago, wanting help with her wedding invitations. Her wedding was coming up pretty soon so we got a move on it. 

The final product...

I'm a little partial to her wedding colors, since pink and purple were also in my wedding. And when you add those two colors to the green table I took the pictures on, you have all three of my wedding colors. Love it.

How obsessed am I with that purple patterned paper? I've used it for one other wedding and I loved it just as much last time.

Andréa picked out this really fun font called Some Weatz. I heart those swirls.

Brides, this is not a bad idea at all...combining your accommodations card and your directions card. I think it worked out pretty nicely and it saved an extra piece of card stock. Less card stock = less money. There's some math that every bride should love.

Front of the envelope.

And there's the return address on the back. We did a little circling of the address around the initial of her soon-to-be last name, tying together that piece from the invitation. 

I really enjoyed helping Andréa out and it made it extra special that she just happens to be my husband's cousin. She's getting married in just a few weekends and I know she'll be a beautiful bride. 

Congratulations, Andréa and Isac!

Love Me Some Photography

There are some new pics on my website! You can either make your way over there via this link, or you can just keep scrolling down this post to see the new collages. Your pick!

The new collages that adorn my 'Weddings' page were done by Danielle Moss, who designed my entire website for me back in March. A few days after she finished them, I realized that it was pretty easy to create my own collages using Picasa. Thus (I love a good thus every now and then), the rest of the collages were born. Isn't it great when you realize you can do something yourself that you've been paying someone else to do? One thing down, about 80 more to go.

Also - photography shout out! - all of the fabulous pics are from Amy Sayre Photography except one. The top left photo in the second collage is from Mike Topham Photography, who was the photographer for my brother's wedding.

In Fall To-Do List news, I'm quite happy with how things are progressing. I've given myself until Thanksgiving to get everything done, then comes the Christmas To-Do List. :)

That darn apple pie keeps sticking out to me. I need to take care of that.

Happy Fall, Y'all! (I should live in the south.)

Seven Business Myths and Ten Fonts

I feel inspired this week to share a blog that I came across because of one of my BFFs. I just think it's too good not to share. I thought that there might be someone else out there that's trying to get a business started or struggling in their existing business that might benefit from an encouraging read.

What I am realizing about having my own business is that one day will be really good and then the next day will be...a little less good. When this happens I typically try to just keep moving forward, which I've always thought was a decent way to do things (in life in general), but I've also found that it helps to read something that really motivates and inspires me. I found that something this week and I would like to share it.

In addition, I am dealing with a major font addiction and I'll share some great fonts that I've found lately (most of them free) and where you can find them. That's how excited I am about fonts this week. Yay!

So my friend Heidi and I are both aspiring entrepreneurs and we let each other know if we come across something particularly interesting that is related to business. She recently texted to see if I had heard of Biz Ladies, which is a part of another website, DesignSponge. Biz Ladies is a series of blog posts for woman entrepreneurs where you can find topics on anything from time management to accounting and finance to ethics and etiquette. In other words, this is a blog that I will now become obsessed with (in addition to fonts, of course).

The article that I came across first is called 'Seven Myths That Make Earning Ugly', and it's the article I wanted to bring to your attention today. The author, Tara Gentile, is a business coach and blogger and sets out to bust seven myths that business owners face. Being someone who is only seven months into her business, this article helped remind me of some important things. Here's an excerpt that falls under Myth 3: I do not need to make more money because I love what I do.

Your time, energy and circumstances (hello, work-from-home moms!) do not reduce the value of what you do or produce. Value is value. It’s your job to better understand the value of your work to your customers and clients and then constantly improve on how that value is perceived so that you can truly make (lots of) money beautifully.

Am I the only one out there that thinks that pricing has been one of the most difficult parts of doing this whole business thing? It's definitely been something I've struggled with, which might be why this excerpt impacted me.  But as I've kept moving forward - realizing that I should constantly be checking to make sure I'm giving my brides a valuable experience - I've become a little more confident each time I've quoted a price.  Articles like these have helped give me that little push I needed to do this.

So, go...read the Biz Ladies articles. Add it to your google reader. Put it with the rest of your bookmarks. Or just memorize the address and check back multiple times daily like I do. I'm pretty sure you won't be upset you did.

OK...now on to part two of this blog post: fonts. (Fonts!) I've found some great fonts lately and just wanted to share. I'm always looking for new fonts, especially script fonts that will look great on a wedding invitation.

(By the way, all of them are free with the exception of Hiatus. Hiatus is from Veer.com, which has the most beautiful fonts I've ever seen, but is a little pricey.)

You can click on the name of the font to find where it's found.

1. Before the Rain

2. Better Heather

3. Channel

4. Halo Handletter

5. Hiatus 

6. Respective

7. Freebooter Script

8. Doris Day

9. Honey Script

And for all of you Christmas font lovers, here's a fun one. Right in time for all of the Christmas hoopla. :)

10. Christmas Card

OK, that's enough for now. I know there are other font lovers out there, so I'll make sure to share if I get any fun, new fonts with you. :) 

I hope everyone has a fantastic Halloween. For some reason I've been all about it this year even though I never have been before. Luke even said the other day, "so...you're really into Halloween this year, huh?" I don't know what it is, but it's even surprised me. 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday, Vivian Elle

I must take a break in my invitation posting to tell you that today is Vivian Elle's 2nd birthday. Not the invitation business Vivian Elle, but the little thing that I named it after:

Because this blog can only handle so much cuteness, I'll stop there.

Vivian Elle turns 2 today and I just wanted to take some time out to celebrate her. She's an inspiring little thing and a joy to be around. And just to keep consistent with posting some fun paper products, here's a little card I made up for her today.

Since her birthday was a rainy one, I thought the umbrellas were a nice fit.

And here's a blogged Happy Birthday from her uncle and me, since we weren't able to be with her today. Ginny, are you holding her up to the computer so she can see? :)

Happy birthday, Viv!

Kenny and Meghan's Programs

Have you had enough of looking at programs yet? No? Excellent, because here’s one more (last one, I promise).

I had worked on Meghan and Kenny’s invitations a few months ago and shortly after, Meghan contacted me to do their programs. She wanted to keep it simple so we used the same classic ecru paper from their invitations and decided on a simple 4x12 piece of card stock. In addition, she wanted to loop purple ribbon through the top so she could attach them to the chairs (what a great idea, by the way...not only does it look great, it’s practical). 

The first thing that Meghan said was that we needed enough room to put a lot of information on the program...and she did have a LOT of information. My greatest accomplishment was that I actually fit everything in (it would be sad if this was actually the greatest accomplishment out of my entire life thus far...not as sad since it was just the greatest accomplishment of this single project). 

I am so excited about my fall decor that I had to take a picture with it in the background. Fall!

I love these programs...the 4x12 cardstock is such an elegant look, but really simple. Meghan and Kenny were married this past weekend at the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth. Sigh. I must start crashing some of these weddings soon. 

In other news, my fall to do list has one more thing crossed off. Slowly but surely is my motto with this list. 

I visited Tennessee this past weekend and hit up my second apple orchard of the season with the BFFs on Saturday. We split apple dumplings. Oh my goodness...I’m still salivating. I remember telling my friend Kauri that I’d just have a couple of bites of hers. Biggest understatement of the weekend. 

Speaking of food, I have incorporated so many new recipes into our meal plan, which was much needed after a summer of "oh...we're having BBQ chicken quesadillas again?". I just wanted to share my three favorites, all found on Pinterest. 

1. Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches

www.favfamilyrecipes.com

Be still my beating heart. These are SO good. I put a little less cream cheese, just so I could pretend it was kind of healthy.

2. Ham and Cheese Sliders

www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com

To die for.

3. Crispy Chicken with Creamy Italian Sauce and Bowtie Pasta

www.jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com

This recipe is no joke.  There's nothing else to say.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for another wedding and new and improved picture galleries on my website!

Erin and Austin's Wedding Programs

A few months ago, Erin and Austin enlisted me to help with their wedding invitations. Here's a picture to refresh your memory:

When it came time to make programs, Erin wanted to use the same tree graphic and create a booklet for the program.

We pulled the tree and the layout of their names from the original invitation to create a cover for the the booklet.

This type of program gave them plenty of room to have their ceremony order, their wedding party and family, and a thank you note to their guests.

We took the cover and incorporated it into each page. I absolutely love them...they tied their invitation in perfectly with their wedding day. Congratulations, Austin and Erin!