t.g.i.friday!

Wouldn't it be nice to sleep like this...all bundled up with your favorite stuffed moosen? That's our dog Charlie. You see, he has to sleep under the covers - ALWAYS.

T and I are hitting the road to go to NC for his grandmother's 90th!!! birthday. I hope you guys have a great weekend.

program idea

I'm really enjoying the look of these programs. I might do something similar for ours as my next project.

[[found via wemetinabar]]

gocco: production part iii

Instead of fighting the gocco, I decided to work with the gocco. Since it would never burn my whole invitation fully (the words were to0 close to the edge), I decided to break my invitation into 3 different parts, which then turned into a 4-step printing process.





There are of couse things I would have done differently now that I have gocco'd the invites, but I'm still satisfied with the results. The main thing I learned was not to do a circle within a circle. It's nearly impossible to center it again unless you ink them at the same time (which if I had wanted to do that then I would have needed to make our logo a little bit smaller so that I could place blocking around the logo without covering the dots). And like the RSVP, I embossed the little blue dots.

gocco: production part ii

Next item up for the gocco was our RSVP cards. It was a two step printing process, but it worked beautifully. My original inspiration came from a lovely morning...I just loved the use of the tiny hearts. Kristina had an amazing wedding, so check her blog out!

I embossed the dots, hearts, and our logo. These cards turned out surprisingly well.

Many many thanks go out to all the great suggestions, advice, and help I received when I was having gocco difficulties. I owe these beauties to ya'll. THANK YOU!

now what?

So...now that I have my invitations out, what should I be focusing my attention to?

I know there are only two months to go, but I still feel like I have time on my hands. Is that normal, or am I setting myself up for disaster?

I mean, I know I work better under pressure, but I don't want to be going insane the last 2 weeks before THE DAY.

So to the married ladies out there, or the soon-to-be Mrs's, what should I be doing with two months left to go?


Thanks!
~the not-so-sure-what-to-do-now future bride

if i was what i ate then...

...I'd totally be Mexican. We love Mexican!! It's usually in our weekly diet at least 2 times. Sad I know, but we just love it!

Therefore, we decided it would be fitting to have our rehearsal dinner at this cute little mexican restaurant in Vinings. We actually considered having our reception here (back when we were thinking of changing everything) because the rental fee is out-of-this world-inexpensive and NO deposit is required. Plus since it's at a restaurant there is no need to rent tables, chairs, dinnerware, etc.

But alas, we didn't decided to go that route, so instead we'll be having our last dinner as single folk at the restaurant - enjoying another delicious mexican meal.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gents...the invitations have made it to the post office. Watch your boxes for a sweet treat!

happy weekend!

I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend!

This weekend I hope to finish my invitations and get them in the mail. Wish me luck!

I found the inspiration for packing my invites from the talented Courtney of Flush Designs. Check out her blog too! AH-mazing!
I love the combination of twine and embroidery string.

favor idea

I tried making homemade marshmallows.

They were OKAY...a little crunchy, but okay. I need to improve my technique.
1. Try not to crystalize the sugar.
2. Use Mom's kitchen aid mixer
3. Make them look prettier.

meet my new friends

Embossing can add a lot to a card. It just makes it look fancier. I picked up the clear embossing powder from Paper-Source.


About half way though embossing my thank yous, my heat gun I purchased stopped working. I must have over worked the little thing. So we bought this fancy one from Lowes. It's much better!

gocco: production part i

FINALLY, after 3 trips to Kinkos, printing our design too many times to count, and wasting too many screens and bulbs, I was able to start gocco-ing on Sunday. Hallelujah!

I wanted to start with something that I knew would work, so that I would be able to sort out all the kinks and mishaps prior to printing our invitations. I decided to go with thank you design 2, so that's where I started my gocco adventures. Everything went surprisingly smoothly, given the trouble I had initially printing the designs. To add a little more 'umph' to the card, I decided to emboss the design. It's my new favorite thing.

Things I've learned along the way on my first real gocco experience:
1. Print from a laser printer. The photocopies I had wouldn't burn fully on the screen. I did find out that if you have to use a photocopier, then copy your image on the lightest setting.
2. Make sure your image isn't too close to the edge of the screen. For some reason, the image won't burn well close to the edge. I had difficulties with my invitations and the words were about 1/4" to 3/8" away from the edge. I even tried exposing twice, but this didn't help, it just wasted two bulbs.

a fraction of love

I have decided to give the blog a new name (but keeping the same url). I thought it deserved a name a little more interesting. A while back, my m.o.h. showed me a piece of art work entitled 'a fraction of love' and the math major in me fell in love. It has kind of served as our inspiration for our invitation suite as well.

What do you guys think?

3 day weekend!

Thank goodness because I have lots to do....

1. work on invitations***
2. dress fitting appointment
3. buy fabric for centerpieces
4. go to bead store
5. buy cellophane bags
6. make marshmallows
7. work on program design
8. sew napkin rings
9. meet with florist
10. work on reception play list (ahem...T's job)
11. buy buttons for paper garland
12. pom pom
13. make thank you cards

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On a completely different note, look at the surprise I got when I cracked open this egg. In all my egg-cracking years, I've never come across a 2 yolk'r.

Enjoy! and have a happy weekend!

gocco: trouble shooting

Grrr....I am having troubles with the gocco. For some reason the whole image doesn't burn completely onto the screen. So for instance with my thank yous, my lines of dots will have gaps in them or the script 'thank you' faintly burns onto the screen so when you print with the ink it barely shows up - if at all.

Can anyone help me....please....I need to get my invitations made pronto!

I'm using photocopies, so the carbon is present. I'm using brand new/never-been-open screens, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've tried making my thank you card 3 times, so that's 3 screens and 6 bulbs. I can't be wasting supplies like this (since they're so hard to come by anyways).

[One of those attempts was design 1, with the large orange circular thank you. This didn't fair well since the text is rather thin. The ink kind of took over so once printed you couldn't read it that well. Are there any tips for printing large areas of ink?]

Please help me.....

Thanks!
-desperate gocco novice

more magnets

Here are more magnets I made to adorn our refrigerator. Don't you just love these? They add such nice flare to the white fridge.

thank yous

Which card do you like the best?

[[designed by: yours truly]]

we're back on the bandwagon!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. These past couple of weeks have been very stressful and quite unmotivating. T officially lost his job in early December [rather, the work ran dry so there was just no work for him]. I was already worried about how we were going to pay for the rest of our wedding, so now with only half our income our first thought was we needed an extreme-wedding makeover.

We ran through 4 different plans and budgets - resulting in an overwhelming number of options [I'll post about these later].

!!NOT.MAKING.OUR.DECISION.ANY.EASIER!!

We thought about dropping our venue all together, having the reception at a restaurant, and cutting our guest list down to 40 people. This would definitely cut the costs; however, taking into account the money lost in our already paid deposits, that brings the price back up to our original budget.

Then we thought about just cutting the guest list to 40, but keeping all our vendors and venue the same. But, then the daunting task of choosing who gets invited was much more challenging than we thought.

T and I are very analytical/logical people, so we ran numbers on every possible situation until the numbers became just that - numbers. It kind of became all about the numbers. I know this can be a good thing, but in this situation we kind of lost touch with what we really wanted in our wedding. We decided to turn to our officiant for some additional advice and guidance.

****************************************************************

We're back on the bandwagon toward wedded bliss going with our original plans - Pace House, BBQ, all guests.

Reasonings:
1. By changing the reception to the restaurant we felt that we would lose the 'feeling' that we were trying to create by having it at the Pace House.
2. We don't want to make a 'what-could-have-been' moment in our life
3. We don't want to have any regrets about our wedding

I know there are things about my wedding that aren't perfect, things that I'd like to add to my wedding, but life is full of compromise. I think T and I are finally feeling confident that we're making the right decision and we can't wait to celebrate with our closest friends and family.

Hopefully this is the beginning of a new, motivated self.

can't haves

Videography...I mean, who really wants a video of their wedding? When will you ever watch it again except right after the wedding? Right.

Those were my exact thoughts when I first thought about videography. It was never a part of my must-haves. But now I would so love to have a cute little super 8 film of my wedding day - the whirlwind that it will be - to capture all the little details, the hugs and laughter that I may miss.


Sadly, I know this isn't within financial reach. This is just a wishful post admiring the beauty that is super 8.