Seat assignments are so bizarr-o, aren't they??

Sorry for not uploading those pictures correctly last night! Thanks for your patience.

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If you're wondering about the 2am time stamp of this post, I just finished this assigned project:

Chicken or Beef? 

In what seems to be a ridiculous set-up-for-frustration to many a party planner, my new sister-in-law picked up some placecards which had packaging implying it would be easy to send through any printer.  When she couldn't quite finagle them, she handed the packs over to me for some problem solving. I stared at disbelief as I realized they were TOTALLY BUNK and began to mentally draft my complaint letter to the stationary company.

The white space in the middle was a perforated pop-out tag that could only be hand-written and the whole thing is intended to look like this:

Since I haven't picked up calligraphy yet (yet?), I HAD to get around the whole "hand-written" thing! Kim and Alan are going for a much more proper vibe than our "first-name-only-zero-last-names-and-all-in-different-font-please" style that we had Devon do for our wedding last month. So I created a template, played around with 1000s of fonts, sent out a few "samples" to Kim, printed them out in big sheets, and cut them down to 3" x 1.5" tabs.

Then I folded the flat cards and sealed the tags onto the front.

It's been kind of a whirlwind year with three engagements, loads of showers for the brides, and now a third wedding in the immediate family within 1.5 months. We went to cousin Cat's wedding the day after our honeymoon return and it's been super go-go-go for Kim's wedding coming up this weekend. Luckily, she has asked me to help out with some of the fun day-of-set-up (tablescape! chuppah!) and I'm really excited to be on the other side of this process!

The guest list and table numbers came through my email this afternoon so I got to work immediately after dinner. After some spelling clarifications and a few "design consultations" through email and phone (what did people DO before computers and cell phones?), I whipped up these puppies.

Each corner was clipped to add a bit of detail.

I think that adds up to just over 400 clipped corners. 
Whoops, just noticed I didn't get to every corner of Patti and Tom Zechlin, table 11.

Took me way too long to find that middle squiggly line, but I'm kind of fond of it. And now that I know how to do it, I might just add it to everything. The seafood folks got anchor silhouettes and the kids (two little girls) got cute hearts, fyi.

Hope Kim is happy with the results!

Happy wedding season, ya'll.  Aaaand, good night.

Wall Post...and I'm not talking about Facebook.

remember when we were going through some kitchen changes?
well, we still had some issues with the right wall.

what it looked like before...yaaaawn.
cluttered, boring, yuk.
ugh. such a weird wall.
that's the entry door on the right.
we painted the left jut-out section, but left this part white.

and then i got inspired in an ice cream shoppe.
i liked those frames with words in them.
i raced home and we printed up some of our fave mantras.
spray painted some frames.
gorilla glued the heck out of them and used tape to "clamp".
(yay for gorilla glue, btw!)
tada!
much better?

~then, yes devon, we finished our ice cream. :)~

There's something so write about this.

Probably the coolest thing I've seen this week....

August 18th, 2009

Mysterious Letters

Mysterious Letters is one of the loveliest projects I have ever stumbled upon. In April 2009 Lenka Clayton & Michael Crowe sent a personal, handwritten letter to all 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall.

‘We hoped these unsolicited letters would prompt neighbourly discussion, spreading across the town, promoting community curiosity. The art work consists solely of the discussion between the recipients about what on Earth these letters are, who sent them and why, etc.’

I know it wasn’t their intention, but I would love to see the letters turned into a book! Lenka also made the super cute films love and age.

Oh, how I would love to be a recipient of all 467 of those letters. -l.

Crafting - Bridal Shower Stuffs (explained)

It pays off to take pictures of your friends, particularly @ bars or at any other time of outlandish performance. And it reeeeally pays off to have friends pull mad faces & pose ridiculously. I'm v.proud to know they'd surely struggle to find equally ludicrous photos of yours truly.

Per Sarah's request, here are a few tutorials on how to accomplish some fun favor items! And to the few who have asked, I totally run a daytime job. Although, good call. I am a bit un-enamored with it at the moment - eep. Does it really look like this stuff took an extensive amount of time? Maybe my craftier friends have trained me into higher productivity, keeping me up all hours into the night to polish off Halloween invites (ahem, devon) or covering every inch of a 2000sqft home with all things sorority (ahem, jen). Mostly, I think I've known about dev's bridal shower needs since last year; leaving plenty of time to hunt for, make, and gather things!! :) ok, moving on...

1. Picture Frames
• pick up some cute, teeny frames. these had a 2"x2" window. places like target, costplus, lnt-ca have good deals, keep an eye out and stock up ahead of time. big box stores have superb return policies if you get extra, which you should totally do jic.
  
• trace the glass onto a patterned piece of paper. i stock up on scrapbook kits that go on sale for coordinating, fun papers. also, look @ the magazines or catalogs you have @ home. they have plenty of large enough sections of patterns that would look great in a frame.
• find a terribly funny picture of your friend, crop + shrink (i just use MicroWord), print in multiples, and cut out. don't get weirded out when your dog picks up your friend's head and starts chomping down. hudson just loves devon's face.
  
• print out a phrase + speaking bubble, also in MicroWord, onto vellum paper.
• glue the bubble + picture onto the patterned paper, wait to dry, put in frame!
• I like this glue or this one for most paper stuff:
2. Personalized Chocolate Bars
• pick up some yummy + diff chocolate bars.
• cut out + wrap the bars with some pretty patterned paper.
• copy + paste a pretty/pretty pic onto MicroWord, make b/w + transparent (in Format Picture - Color Lines - Fill), and definitely put the picture behind the text (in Format Picture - Layout - Wrapping Style).
  
• Find a fun font and type your phrase directly onto picture. i chose, "celebrate ME, bitches!" you can choose something, perhaps without a profanity?
  
• Print + cut out. Glue directly onto patterned paper!
3. Aw Nuts! Bags.
• get cellophane bags of any flat variety. i chose these from martha @ michaels (really cute site, btw). i thought they were pretty.
• download a landscape template from Avery + use their mailing labels to print a fun photo + statement.
  
• print + stick onto each bag.
• fill with items of choice: i did a mix of home-cinnamon-roasted-almonds, honey roasted peanuts, & wholefoods trailmix. dude, wholefoods rocks and i don't mind that they're taking over the world. they're all over cali, some in colorado (yay, liz!), and even one in freaking tulsa. woo-freaking-whoo!
• disclaimer: i made the almonds when jamie was out of town for a few days so that any trace of almond dust got out of the kitchen before he got back. can't have him get grossly asphixiated because of a rouge, tainted wooden spoon, after all. peanuts + cashews are cool, almonds + walnuts are the worst. he calls contaminated items "death-____"...as in "death cookies" & "death cakes" etc.
  
4. Tote Bags
• sketch your inspired image onto regular paper. i just doodled the first three images of LA that popped into my head. palm trees, check. sunshine, check. aeroplane, check.

• trace each image separately to prevent leakage and to enable overlap when painting.
• freezer paper paint onto tote bag in separate phases. i did the sunshine first bc it was the most gratifying; lots of mixing colors, adding gold paint to each of the orange/red/yellows for extra sheen! the palm trees were a bit tricky in that the freezer paper didn't want to create a perfect seal on the ridged tote bag, so if you want crisp lines, look for a smoother surface to work on. luckily, palm trees are rarely smooth, but rather ridged in nature so i convinced myself it was a-ok.
• heat set everything so if need be, the bag can be machine-washed!
  
• print out letters on t-shirt transfer paper + iron on last.
• tie on a name tag for each person & some sparkley wirestuffs just for added snazz.

And that's it! I think...did I miss anything?

ps. How many of ya'll are becoming obsessed with David Archuleta?? I feel like he really gets me.

Crafting - Bridal Shower Stuffs

Not anywhere close to uploading all those dang photos from the bach'ette weekend. But I do have some pics of homemade goods that went into the favor bags for each of Devon's bridal shower attendees. For some reason, I didn't take pictures of the finished product all lined up in a row (thought it was cool-looking), or of the bags of nuts with labels that said, "AW NUTS! Dev's going off the market!"; the white candle-holders from CB2 + green pear tealights; the teeny card tri-pack; or the biscotti courtesy of Starbucks (why would i take a pic of that anyway). So, here are the pics I did manage to take and find a "tutorial" here:

can you read these? i thought i was hilarious. click for larger size.

chocolate bars.

yoga shirts...which we ended up wearing to a brunch + a movie.
all wrapped up in homemade tote bags with
eco-packaging + personalized for the weekend.
that's our WHS friend, Laura. her fiance looks like Tiki Barber.

see?? here I am with Laura's fiance, Jermaine, and then Tiki Barber with his wife.

Crafting - Freezer Paper Stencils

Dude. Best craft EVER. I'm taking a risk by posting this well before the baby shower, but I'm just hoping Ramona (UCD roommate) doesn't actively read this before her shower. It's supposed to take place at a tea room in SF I've never been to, but totally reminded me of the one Lauren had in Oklahoma. Exciting...I like tea. Ok, reason for premature post? I HAVE to spread this fun/fun/fun great time I'm having with clothing creation!

little baby onsies!
"The Animal Love Series"

cow represents ramona's alma mater.
For an unborn kiddo, I made 6-9 month ones...
parents, do you think I should have gone smaller or do they still wear them @ this age?

check it out, it's Hudson Love!
all packaged up and ready to gift.

Since I was assigned "game & entertainment" task @ Jen's baby shower, we're gonna make more little clothing tomorrow. Good thing, too. I really haven't gotten my fill of this fun time and Jamie was just beginning to hide his clothing for fear of me attacking them with animal prints. Hey, you try convincing someone that a dog-pooping silhouette would look smashing on the lapel of a grey, pinstripe suit.

I'll take more pics of the process tomorrow! 'Til then.