Invitations: step by step

Begin with a lovely green cardstock envelopement from Paper Source.

Use a diecut punch to round the edges of the flap.

Use leaf paper punch to add interesting visual detail. Be sure to measure 1.5" from each edge for each leaf. And then trek back to Michaels to exchange the tool becuse it cannot stand up to 175 consecutive punches.

Add a bit of brown ribbon and make a bow through the punched leaves.

I ordered a custom address stamp from Etsy for the RSVP envelopes. The invitation envelopes are sporting a stamp with my parents address (since they are generously hosting this wedding event!) but I figured we would deal with the RSVP's here at home, so those will come to us in Anchorage. I used white ink so the image would show up on the brown envelopes, but they are smearing a tiny bit. Oops.

Insert elements!

Final product:

A little bit of everything

Guess how hot it got yesterday? 61 freaking degrees! Who knows what the summer will be like -- I can't figure out this weather. Last week it snowed, this week we are supposed to have temps in the low to mid-50's.

Took my car into a local shop for a 20,000 mile checkup. Should run under $100. The Honda dealership wanted to charge me $296 for the same service! The only good thing about going to the dealership is the free shuttle. Since D is still out bear hunting and I couldn't wait any longer, I ended up taking a cab from the shop to my workplace. Only $6! I guess I could have ridden my bike but I couldn't find the pump to reinflate my tires. Hoping to bum a ride from one of my coworkers after the shop is through with the service.

Oh and I wanted to include a photo of my completed dessert stands - all 5 of them. They are currently being stored in the guest bedroom (a.k.a. wedding central!)

Invites & USPS

For pete's sake, what is up with the invites?! One thing after another with these things. The latest hiccup is postage on some of the envelopes. Before sending out the first test invitation, I marched on down to the post office and had one weighed. Perfect, the lady said. One $0.44 stamp is fine.

So then I mailed out the remainder in batches until my parents called to say that some were coming to them (theirs is the return address) with "postage due" on the front. Argh. Now they are affixing extra postage (sorry mom & dad!) and re-mailing. I ended up using my leftover postcard stamps for the envelopes still remaining here at the house. What's weird is some have been making it to their destinations while others get returned.

I was just given a huge project at work, so with that added to my workload I will really not be blogging much in the coming weeks.

Craft night

It snowed hard yesterday, but most of it has melted off and today is a slightly sunny day. D has been gone all week but should be home by the time I get off of work. He saw some bears, but no shooters.

Hosted girls' craft night at our house on Wednesday evening. It was a great night! I really need to have everyone over more often. I had planned on making caribou lasagna, but (surprise, surprise) got too busy and ended up serving pizza - along with side dishes of fruit salad, salmon dip, summer sausage, cheese and some salad. And wine. Lots of wine!

This is my last free weekend for the next 5 weeks, so I'll be making the most of it! After that, 5 weeks of pure h@*# will ensue, work-wise. (FYI...don't expect many coherent, happy-go-lucky posts during that time.)

Invites

The wedding invites arrived at our house on Sunday (thanks to Gabe for making a mail run for us!) It's always my worst nightmare to open up a print job and see a mistake. Well peeps - there was a MISTAKE! The printers forgot to ink the second side of our RSVP card, so they're all blank.

Honestly it's not the end of the world, but I had a special design for the back side and I'm kind of disappointed. The company offered to reprint the RSVP cards but it will take at least a week to print / mail out, and we don't have that kind of time. So I'm taking a discount code instead and will use that for a future project.

Overall the paper products turned out beautiful. Great paper, good weight, color matching was pretty spot-on!. I spent all of last evening tying ribbons and stuffing envelopes. Current status: 1/3 complete. The outer envelopes all have mailing labels - I know that technically I am supposed to handwrite all of the addresses but (here come the excuses): 1) I have work tasks and stress up the wazzoo; 2) my fiance' has been gone 24 days out of the last 30 and does not have time to help me address envelopes; 3) invitations would be arriving in guests' mailboxes, oh, by next year if I had to handwrite out each one.  So I hope no one is offended, but something had to go and it was this!

Wedding project: dessert stand

When I started wedding planning last fall, one of my first to-do's was price out wedding cakes. I was shocked at what I found out. $5 a slice for cake and $500 total? REALLY?! It's difficult not to get jaded about the wedding industry when you are faced with inflated costs left and right. My solution for most of these overpriced options is to DIM (do-it-myself) or DIWDH (do-it-with-D's-help).

Instead of a traditional 3- or 4-tiered cake, we will be offering our guests a selection of our favorite desserts, like cheesecake, cookies, cupcakes, etc. I saw this project on the internets somewhere and modified it to fit our needs. It's basically a 4-tiered dessert/cake stand.

I saw these melamine plates at Michael's and immediately snatched up 25 of them for this project. The store also had cute door knobs that matched the color scheme so I bought 5 of those as well. Total cost of these plates and knobs was $30.

At Home Depot, I purchased something called Allthread that matched pretty closely to the diameter of the threaded portion of the door knob. I asked the HD guys to point me in the right direction and ended up finding everything I needed in one aisle. 

After D returned home from hunting, he took up his tools to help out with the technical stuff. He matched his drill bit size to my 1/4" 20 allthread. I planned to make 5 stands, so I bought at least 5 of everything. After some broken and cracked practice plates, D switched to a ceramic tile bit and drilled holes in the center of each plate. (I think we ended up losing 6 plates.)

From one of my Home Depot trips: washers to protect the top and bottom of each plate from my tightening nuts, really long nuts to connect the allthread and doorknob, and rubber feet to make the stands more stable.

D put some weight on a couple levels to test our first stand. It held up!

Overall this project came in under $50 for 5 stands, not including our time, but we definitely would have paid more at the store for something similar. So I consider $10 per stand to be a substantial cost savings over retail.

Springtime in Alaska

Par for the course -- it snows like crazy when D is out of town. This springtime dump lasted about 24 hours.

I snapped this yesterday morning before leaving for work.

Halfway through the day.

Leaving work. I left a lot later than usual so as to miss most of the traffic.

At Lake Otis & Tudor - the city will begin work on this intersection (widely recognized as the worst in town) this weekend and finish up by the end of July. I need to fiind an alternate route to work ASAP!

Arrived home to lots of snow all over. Most of the yard was clear 2 days ago and we could see actual grass. So much for that. Drift is ecstatic about the weather-- he rolled his big yellow body all over the new snow.

We played fetch with the dummy for a while and then took off on a 45-minute walk. It was after 9 p.m. when I took these photos so you can see that our daylight is definitely increasing!

Looking the other way down 72nd. Pretty pink sky is a nice after-effect of the sunset. The snow was still falling!

Woke up this morning to sun streaming through the bedroom windows. The weather forecasters say to enjoy it while we can -- tomorrow we'll see cloudy skies (but temps in the low 40's - yay!) for the next few days.

Laundry room update

Are you sick of reading about our laundry room yet? I just get really excited when we near the end of any remodeling project. D is a super fast worker and I try not to push him into any sort of schedule because he has a really good work ethic and always completes a project. I mean, he finished our complete kitchen overhaul in like 2.5 weeks and that must be some sort of record. Me on the other hand - I took close to half an hour to chisel out the setting for a closet doorknob. (Yeah, I'm slow.)

There are some minor finishing details that need to be addressed, like trim and the pocket door, but we're close! This room is a combination laundry/utility/storage space, so it's doing triple duty.

Tuesday update

D arrived home late Friday night and then left again on Monday afternoon. I sure hope he gets a brown bear because we're going on week 2 of spring hunting. It's like his full time job now! I don't mind though - it makes him happy and we both like to have time apart to really appreciate our time together.

But what happens when your significant other leaves town? That's right - something goes wrong. The wind has been whipping through town over the last few days. Although we don't have it as bad as the eastside or hillside, the trees were swaying pretty heavily in the yard. Our side gate only falls open in very windy weather and I didn't even think about it when I let Drift out this morning. Then he was nowhere to be found in the backyard when I wanted to leave for work and I realized the wind must have really been bad overnight to blow that gate open. He ended up being down the culdesac in a neighbor's side yard. Yeah, it's always fun to run around the neighborhood in nice work clothes and heels, yelling for your dog.

Had a wedding dress fitting at the house on Saturday and I think it went well. My mom's dress originally had a high neck and long sleeves, so the alterationist removed those and then pinned up around me to work on the fit. She said we have at least 2 more fittings to do.

I had the printer send my wedding invites down to my sister in California because it was 5 times more expensive to ship them up here to Alaska! Totally ridiculous. I'm excited to see them - the quality is better and overall the price was cheaper than what I was quoted from local print houses. Risha had to pick up the packages directly from UPS since they apparently cannot find her house. I'm a little concerned with California UPS because the CSR told me someone had talked to my sister about the package (did not happen), left a slip on her door (negative), and reported that she has moved (um, no). Meanwhile, Alaska UPS rocks -- I had a UPS woman deliver a package to me at home (off the clock) because she felt bad that I had made a useless trip down to the pick-up center.

Bears and wine bottles

My other half is off hunting bears in the wilderness. And from a garbled cell phone message yesterday, it sounds like he will be staying out there another couple days. I always laugh when people say I'm a "fishing widow" because it's not really true -- D and I usually get to fish together. When he does go without me it's usually only for 2-3 days. But a hunting widow? That's definitely the category I fall into. And it takes at least a week to hunt something, most often longer.

Speak of the devil - D just called and may come home today. Woot! There's a chance he will go out again next week because the bears are still staying out of sight, so I'm prepared for that. If he gets back to Anchorage, we can hit up the Sportsmans Show this weekend.

As promised, here is one of the wedding projects I am working on: wine bottle vases. I first saw this on a DIY website and then got the itch to try it out. The first step is to use a glass cutter of some sort and etch a continuous line across the circumference of the bottle. Um, easier said than done. D and I figured out that you need some sort of holder or vise to keep the bottle steady while etching it, otherwise the glass will spider-crack (during the heating process) wherever the lines don't meet up.

Start with a regular ol' wine bottle. The thicker glass is more difficult to work with. I've noticed that this process has a lot of collateral damage. Thank goodness one of my coworkers LOVES wine -- she is keeping me well stocked with bottles to practice with.

The glass cutter that D already had in his tool arsenal...score!

See the etched line? Didn't match up, despite my best efforts.

The next step is to make slow rotations of the etched line over a heat source and then cooling the area with an ice cube. The heating/cooling process causes the bottle to crack along the line. D and I tried the process before he left to go hunting and he used a propane torch to heat the glass.

Truth be told, I was a little intimidated by the propane torch. So when he left town and I wanted to work on this project, I instead went with the tealight method. My thoughts? The tealight sucks. Holding the glass too far away from the flame means the heating process takes forever. Holding it too close leaves a black sooty mess on the bottle.

The frustration finally got to me and I stomped down to the garage to tackle the torch. Result? Not scary at all! It took a fraction of the time as compared to the tealight and no sooty mess on the glass. You can see one of the finished products in the photo below.

Not sure if these will work out because the tops are not perfect enough for me. I still need to experiment with sanding down the rough edges. It's not like anyone will be drinking out of these but we don't need anyone cutting themselves!

Wednesday update

Wow, sorry peeps...it's been a quite a few days since I posted last. Since that time, D has returned from what he deems the "promised land," aka South Dakota. :-) He brought me a beautiful ceramic baking dish and lots of midwest goodies: walleye fillets, buffalo burger and deer bacon! He was home for one whole day before packing up and heading north for some bear hunting. But before D left, I received assistance with two wedding projects...will post more on that later.

So much for putting the patio furniture out...it started snowing early yesterday morning, and continued off and on throughout the day! Some areas of town received up to 4 inches. I've lived in Alaska my entire life, so I know better than to jump the gun and get all excited about spring -- but I was really hoping to have an early start to the season. Needless to say, my adirondack chairs will stay put in the shed for another couple weeks (at least).

Had to work late yesterday (waiting on a big project to be delivered from the printer) so I took advantage of the downtime to work on our wedding vows. I'm pulling inspiration from different sources and weaving in some personal tidbits. A good framework is in place and after some tweaking, I'll have D look it over and add his feedback. Just from reading it over this morning I started tearing up and getting weepy! I'm definitely going to need some waterproof mascara on wedding day.

Dessert

How cute are these little chickies? They're cake pops! From the genius mind of Bakerella.

And dessert "fast food" too...

Moose & moon

As I was getting ready for work this morning, Drift was barking like crazy outside. A quick peek out the window revealed that he was directing his attention towards a rather large moose in the corner of the yard. I hustled downstairs to let him in the house and we both watched as the moose made his way along the side fence. I didn't see what direction it headed off in since I ran off to get my camera and in those few seconds it ran away. The visit is ironic because I was just telling our next door neighbor the other day that we hadn't seen many moose this year!

We had a full moon this week, so I tried to capture it with the nighttime function on my point & shoot camera:

It was remarkably bright - amazing how much light the moon gives off...

Spring cleaning

I'm slightly overwhelmed by life right now. Spring is a very busy time at work and I have some anxiety about getting things done.

But overall this past weekend raised my spirits quite a bit. On Friday I met up with a couple of my girlfriends at McGinley's downtown and had a chance to reminisce about old times. We talked and talked -- it's interesting to note what different people remember about the same event! At some point during the night, we noticed a big group of Alaska hippies riding down the middle of the street (and past the bar) on bikes.

Saturday was movie night with some other friends, and since the film we wanted to see ("Alice in Wonderland" in 3D) was sold out, we scooted over to "The Book of Eli" at the $3 theater. Movie was so-so. And on Monday evening I visited Blues Central to support my friend who was trying speed dating for the first time! I only stuck around for the first 10 minutes or so, but she called me afterwards to dish about the experience.

The last two weekends have been devoted to spring cleaning. My car has 4 bags of clothes and household items ready for the Salvation Army, and I spent DAYS washing our numerous comforters, sheets and pillows (all 10 -  how can two people have 10 pillows?). Thank goodness for our front-loading washer -- it can handle our queen-size fluffy down comforter. And I managed to get 2-3 pillows in each load which isn't too bad.

I snapped this photo on Friday around 4:30 p.m. after my conference had concluded. It was a beautiful day and Sleeping Lady (Mt. Susitna) was clearly visible across the inlet.

It's hard to tell, but that wide expanse of snow is actually covering a lake. Lake Hood is located near the airport and is the busiest floatplane base in the world. I've never been in a floatplane (see the floats instead of wheels?), but have been on small plane flights before. A friend of mine is a pilot and took me up for my birthday years ago...it was amazing! Well, except for when he pulled the "vomit comet" maneuver.

3 months

D has been out of town for almost a week now -- he flew back to the midwest to spend time with family and surprise his parents. Sounds like they were very surprised! Needless to say it's been very quiet around the house. Drift and I have been on some walks, but mostly he stalks me around the house and watches the wedding craft extravaganza.

I am seriously pushing it with these wedding invitations when it comes to getting them out in time. Note to brides - don't design them yourself!!! It's too easy to get caught up in the little details. And after taking that Photoshop class, now I want to get all crazy with my images and create new ones. I'm getting quotes from local printers to see if they can match the estimates I have received from online vendors. Online peeps are great, but what they charge for shipping to Alaska is ridiculous.

This photo is from sometime last week when I hand-stamped the outer envelopes. The table is now a total mess, so it's actually a good thing D is out of town because it looks like Martha Stewart's workshop threw up all over our dining room.