DIY Invites Continued: Envelopes

So I have my DIY invitations good to go, but the envelope is woefully unadorned. What to do? You got it: put a bird on it. I have been learning that a cute collection of stamps is really useful for jazzing things up. They're especially useful if, like me, you have no fine motor skills.

The only drawback is it's a wee bit time consuming, but it's fairly rote so you can do it while watching TV or listening to KWAVE. I was cheap and only bought a tiny acrylic base for the fancy new stamps, so I had to do each one separately, even if it was in the same ink color. Moral of the story: you can save money or time.

Add a mailing label in a cute font & color plus a pretty stamp, and you are golden.

Baby Shower: Almost DIY Invites

Recently I had the privilege of being asked to help throw a Baby Shower. Something I had never done before, but ignorance has never stopped me! (Even when it should) After considering my friend and talking with the main hostess, the theme was decided: Birds and Books, aka

Put a Bird On It.

First thing: invitations. As a person whose ambitions exceed my resources, I am always looking for ways to get what I want for less. It's tragic really. If the heavens poured gold on my lap, Gatsby would quail at my shindigs.

With a bit of advice from Mumsy, I swung an invitation that was completely unique/personalized and cost effective.

I had a few designs made for the Mommy to be. She picked this beauty. (I've edited some details, no 3am pizzas).

So I have the art, now what? The answer to many questions: Costco. I make sure the image is big enough and upload it to Costco's photo-invite department and have it printed like those Pic Christmas cards you get. And here is the result:

Bear in mind when you design stuff it usually prints darker. Another challenge is limited space, so to make things easy I created a blog post that worked as a "micro-site" where I could put more info. After a visit to tiny urls.com my massive link name is compact and invite ready.

So ta-da! Glossy printing and silver lined envelopes, courtesy of Costco. Now to make those bare envelopes nice...

Color Collage Revisited

Since we're on the theme of colors, I made a fun little collage with elements from my wedding. I'm finding it's a lot easier to post illustrations for the blog since I have all my wedding pictures ;-) .

Along the way, I couldn't get the "perfect" raspberry color, but the lovely watermelon/honeysuckle/deep pink that evolved was beautiful. True raspberry has a little touch of red. The final palette came down to the pink coral, orange, "raspberry" and gold as an accent. To make things better people actually heeded the invitation! People wore the wedding colors, so when I looked over the guests during the ceremony I saw bursts of color. It was even more fun to see on the dance floor.

Forward Thinking

So it turns out my color palette was ahead of it's time! Check out Pantone's color of the year, "Honeysuckle" and the palettes used for it. Especially, the wedding ones. It seems people are keen on mixing it with orange... Feel free to thank me for boosting your wardrobe ;-)

The Dress Revisited

What more can I say? :)

The Cake Revisited

I'm going to get my two gripes out and be done forever. My wedding was perfect to me. I was glowing and incandescently happy all day, but two things made me frown for the briefest of moments: the ringbearer's walk melded with the flowergirls' so we couldn't see all of them in their full glory of cuteness, and the color ribbon on the cake was off. But seriously, that's it. I'm sure there were plenty of other snaffus, I know there were, but all was solved and nothing marred my happiness on that day. This is largely in part to my setup crew of Kathy and David Curran, Kaitlynn, Mark Spangrud, Yvonne, Robert, Vicky McGuinness, Bea, Linds, Connie, Bridget, Janae and a tiny host of wedding angels. For all my planning, they made it happen, I owe them stock options in my firstborn.

Despite the ill-colored ribbon trim, my cake was so gorgeous! I was blown away by how wonderful it turned out. I showed a picture hoping for a paler imitation but I got exactly what I wanted and at steal! Cakes, if you are unaware, are fiendishly expensive, but my mother found and charmed a baker at our local Gelson's for something fabulous. I am rather proud of her. It was lemon with raspberry filing and I think the fruit was marzipan. I thought he would just place ready made marzipan, which can be gorgeous, but he made it from scratch. This man is wasted on Gelson's.

This was a "smaller" couple's cake, hence it looks a wee bit tiny. Everyone else got red velvet with truffles that was cut up in the back and served. This is a great way to cut costs while still serving a good treat.

The Favors

I decided I wanted an edible favor, and one that wouldn't break my teeth or taste bland. (I'm looking at you, candy almonds and mints.) In the final weeks before the wedding, I came to Chaz's apartment when he was away to drop off some things. I spied what looked like chocolate lollipops on the counter in the kitchen.

I, of course, devoured said "lollipops". I did this under the legal principle of "Chazttel". This principle states that if it is edible, Chaz's and within my reach it also belongs to me.

Turns out they were filled with delicious, moist cake! The chocolate-like shell served as a sweet frosting. My favor search was over. I called Chaz about where these delightful pops came from and he told me a friend at work had a side business of making them.

After numerous samples of cake-pops (usually at breakfast) and different color "frostings", I got my favors! They even came to the wedding and set them up with their own little jars and decorations. We decided on lemon and red velvet cake centers

To make things even better, they'll create a tag for you to stick on the lollipops. This was a perfect spot for a picture Rebel's friend Jen drew for me!

Rumor has it some people didn't get any because they were devoured. So much for one per person, haha! Chaz even made me a bouquet of specially shaped ones (hearts and such) with colored sugar sprinkles. Sadly these were also devoured before I saw them. The thought counts, but bouquet eater, wherever you are, I hope you feel terrible.

(P.S. By the way, if you are interested in some cake pops for a party, the girls have a website in the works. It's under construction but it has a contact number.)