Sneak Peak!

For your viewing pleasure, two photo highlights from today...

A sneak peak at the invitations!


And a candid of life sporting a doggy cone.


Have a great weekend!!!

The best laid plans...

Okay. So with another day home sick from work, I decided to make low-key progress on the decorations. I heated another round of crayons.



And now that I have seemingly enough crayon things to pile into a table decoration, I decided to make examples. There are three different kind of containers they could go in.

or

...... Does anyone see the problem here? They look weird.
So what now? I have ordered all of these crayons



And want to make sure I use them for the wedding. Any other ideas?
Maybe use the crayons in a different way, on the tables off to the sides, so they are kid-friendly? Here are some samples, using the same three vases...



or



I feel silly posting this b/c it isn't in my usual nature to worry about things like this. But I fear my best laid plan is going to fail.

Ideas? Anyone?

ALSO, It is probably important to note that there are three sets of table decorations. We've already decided on what's going to be
1) on the tables where people will eat,
2) there are a different kind of decorations for the food (buffet station) tables/for the side tables in the side rooms, and
3) these crayons were for the bathrooms, gift table, bar, etc.. basically other random places needed.

Uneven Frames

For any true before-and-after posts, there must be a before picture. Here goes:



Austin is out of town for a few nights
... See Davis hoping for him at the door



... And it always seems to happen that I try to do something different while he's gone. A surprise of sorts. Today, the frames came for our dining room canvases that we have been anticipating putting up. So of course, I decided to frame them, and put them up myself! (Despite my 99.9 degree fever...)




This one shows how it's a little crooked. Fortunately, Austin is very into making sure everything is even, so I know he'll be on that upon his return. For now, this is a surprise!

Kashie in promotional vid

Sorry for all the posts today! Check out my sister at :37-:38!

Roanoke College's Campus from Roanoke College on Vimeo.

Blogging a Test Run

I stayed home from work sick today, which was a bummer b/c I was feeling poopy, but was nice b/c I got to do little things that I needed to get done. And then the crayons that I ordered came in the mail! While I'm going to wait a few weeks before I get some help from friends to do these in bulk, I had to do a small test run first...

The crayons in their special-order boxes





Broken up into pieces




Just out of the oven





Cooled and ready to be part of the decorations!

Making Progress with THE INVITATIONS!

I have finished the sewing portion of twenty-five invitations (plus the samples). I am loving, loving working on this wedding stuff. I was not a bride-y person up until the recent months, when I became truly inspired and in love with the flowers by Princess Lasertron.

Even though this blog is about invitations, I couldn't write it without including some of the Lasertron designs, since they truly informed the direction of the wedding decorations.
Here are two examples of flowers of hers that I find a-ma-zing:



















and
























While I was always planning to do invitations in the style featured below, now that I understand the bigger picture of how everything will fit in, it feels more like my artistic expression.

Here is a teensy glimpse of some of the progress from today:














See those two piles? Those are 23 sewn units in the "perfect" pile, and 2 in the "almost perfect" one!
A successful endeavor indeed. (And a glimpse of the doggie helping as well.)


One of a handful of thread mishaps:


Reese helping out

Photography!

So we are not doing engagement photos, b/c it was one way to cut something out of the budget. But I think our photographer team is super awesome, and had to re-post this picture of engagement photos they put up over the weekend.

What do you think?



If you want to see more, I will refer you to her blog.

1st UU in Providence, RI in the news about their Equal Marriage Vote!

CITY YEAR!

My first year out of college, I dedicated a year of my life to AmeriCorps through City Year DC. It was an amazing year. And despite the obligatory group-oriented jumping jacks that I obviously was not the biggest fan of, I learned more in that year than I had in all of my education thus far. I believe in this organization and the work it is doing, both for its Corps Members and for the youth it serves.

This video was posted about City Year DC. It is the executive director talking with Comcast about the great work City Year does in DC, around the country, and in South Africa and London. I can't figure out how to embed it within this post, so I will just have to include the link. Please check it out.

Goooo CYDC!

Comcast Video with CYDC Exec Director Jeff Franco

and to read CYDC's blog, go here: City Year DC Blogspot

And for good measure, I will post a picture of one of the fabulous children I worked with, Samiya. Samiya has so much energy that we would be sitting in a circle on the floor, the teacher would ask a question, and she would jump up and burst out her answer. We worked on "inside voices" a lot... :)

SURPRISE! Your honeymoon may not be what you were anticipating.

We booked our honeymoon through a timeshare that my fiance's parents graciously gave to us. We were very excited, as this is probably the only thing on our budget that we were able to book cheaper than anticipated (thanks to the timeshare help from his parents).

We booked a room at the Moon Palace Resort Hotel & Casino in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Here is a photo of what we anticipate our room looking like:



and


We were originally told that the resort would be changing over to a Hard Rock Hotel the week after we leave. A few weeks after we booked our stay, we received notice that the Resort had already been switched over. Here is a photo of what most of the rooms look like now:


or



My fiance paid off the honeymoon today, so we will see what we end up with. I'm not too sure how I feel about the serenity of black walls for our honeymoon suite.

FONTS!

Wedding items already checked off for today:
- Figured out how to add fiance's request for dress code info to rehearsal dinner invites. Check.
- Ordered rehearsal dinner invites. Thanks to all who provided input! There was a clear winner. Check.
- Gave feedback on layout of bridal shower invitations. Check.
- Printed new version of invitation design. Check.
- And for the item that is theme of this post... Figured out how to add new Fonts to my computer, and use them in the invitation design or for signs describing food/directions for the big day!

Praise be to www.dafont.com, which is a super awesome site for finding, downloading, and using new fonts. More specifically, here is the document I created to bring back to my fiance to get feedback on fonts to use for our weekend.




















And two special shout-outs:
* to Reid for teaching me of this awesome website, and for all of his feedback on graphic design
* to Jasmine for helping me to convert this file to JPG so I can post it!

sweetest valentine flowers

These flowers were given to a co-worker of mine who is our eldest employee. The caption read "Your husband told me to give these to you." Apparently it was a gift from another co-worker. Her husband died 3 years ago. I heard her today thanking our gift-giving co-worker, and say that it was the best Valentine's Day she has had in years.

Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

On to the next wedding decision to be made:

What should our rehearsal dinner invitations look like? While my new in-laws are gracious to be sponsoring this dinner party in full, my fiance and I are the planners.
We want everyone who is coming to the wedding to also come to the rehearsal dinner, so we will be including an insert with the wedding invitations. I am currently working with the fabulous site weddingpaperdivas.com.

Here are our top two choices in styles:

First Post!

My decision to start a blog was a tough one. Sometimes I feel like blogs are used as an excuse to self-indulge about ridiculous things, like what LiveJournal turned into so many years ago.

However, with all of the ridiculous details of wedding planning, really fun cooking, and general hilarity of working in social services, I figured I should write this stuff down. So here goes!

And for my first post, I will attach an image of how I spent some of my day, making a "mood board" for our wedding color themes.