One more thing for sale SOLD

This is a 2x2 square puncher. I used this for the monograms on my invitations. Please make an offer.

I also have 2 18" glass cylinders with a 7" opening as well as 3 24" cylinders with a 7" opening.

More stuff for sale

I have about 140 of these sandalwood fans. None have been used and they are all in their original boxes. I prefer to have local pickup. .50 cent per.

There's just about 50 yards of this stuff. I've opened one of the rolls and used maybe a yard of it. $5 a piece.

This basket is about 15"x15". $5

The paper above is green vellum. I have probably400 pieces. They are 5"x5"

50 favor boxes. When they are assembled they are around 2.5" by 2.5" and 2 inches tall. I paid $25 for the entire box. Please make an offer.

Stuff for Sale.

200 (minus a few) Lollipop sticks. These are 8" long. $2 each plus shipping.

A paper cutter. It needs new blades, but otherwise is in perfect condition. $2 plus shipping.

This is the paper below. I have about 40 pcs of it. $5 plus shipping. The information above is the details about the paper below.

Spirit orbs. As I have heard you can't buy these anymore. I am pretty sure I paid right around $50 for this item. Please make me a reasonable offer.

Bracelet- No longer Selling.

I just bought this baby on etsy. I fully plan to sell it after the wedding because I know I'll never wear it again, so if you're wedding is after June 20th and you're interested in it let me know. I paid $85 so make a reasonable offer and it's yours after only one wear. I promise to ship it after the honeymoon.

Birdcage Cardholder Thingy...SOLD- SOLD- SOLD!

I bought this one ebay seller (dealsonlywebstor) for $12 plus shipping. Even though it is a 'buy it now' item they allow buyers to put in an offer and the seller accepts for declines it. It was originally listed for $24 so I can't complain. I'll most likely put a little ribbon and a sign that says card on it.

My invitations

Here is the finished product that I promised a long time ago. My apologies for the horrible picture quality.

Wedding Location

I've never posted pics of this place before, but this is where we are getting married. Provided shit isn't coming out of the sky, we will be having the ceremony outside.

My New Apt. w00t w00t

Paul and I signed a new lease the other day. We pretty much agreed to give away our first born, but the apartment is pretty sick and in an amazing part of town. Here are some pics.

Hair trial pics

It's been awhile since I last posted. Again, I blame this on my job and my not wanting to even look at a computer after I leave the office. Anyway, after much thought I finally decided to book someone for my hair. I had my trial with Jacki Norrie, the owner of Wedding Tresses who has studios in both R.I. and Plympton, Ma. At first I was a little hesitant in booking just because her prices were a bit expensive, however, she takes all stress out of the day and is ridiculously accommodating. She comes to you at whatever time you choose and that is all you have to worry about.

I really had no clue what I wanted my hair to look like. I had a few pictures of things I liked and we worked from there. Here are some pics of how my hair came out. **Disclaimer** I purposely didn't wash my hair for an entire day before, after working a 14 hour shift at the restaurant. My hair is extremely greasy and I need to wash it at least every day. I figured my hair would stay better if it was dirty, but apparently it was TOO dirty. The front is very weighed down and gross.

We are going to add some loose strands of hair in the front to soften up the look and she is going to put the front of my hair in hot rollers. I think I want a vintage feel to the front with a little wavey height added.

Also, she put my hair in very loose, just in case I didn't like the style and she needed to take it out and re-do it. I absolutely love the back. Mind you, this was at 8am on a Sunday morning. Make -up was entirely unecessary at this point.

More crap I've done

I booked my rehearsal dinner the other day. Seems like a pretty good location which is half way between the 2 areas where the people in our wedding are located. I feel bad having my wedding party have to travel on a week night so I've decided just to do a dinner and a quick walk-thru on who is walking with who.

I also brought my dress to the seamstress the other day. I am using Chris O'hare in Quincy, Ma. She is absolutely AMAZING! I didn't even talk prices with her because everyone says she charges next to nothing for what she does. She also said she would hang on to my dress until the wedding.

Right now all she has to do is take the chest in a little bit (that's a first, having to have anything around my chest made smaller) I still laugh at the thought of it. She is also going to sew in some puffy crinoline stuff into the bottom of my dress which should puff it up enough so that I don't have to get it hemmed at all. I am going to go back in a few weeks to try it on again and see if it is short enough.

Honestly, it feels great to get it out of my closet. Now Paul has no excuse why he can't go into the spare bedroom and get his own clothing out of the closet.

Also, I booked my hair stylist for the wedding. This has been a huge pain in the ass for me to find seeing as we're probably going to have to start at around 6am to be ready for my 11am ceremony. I am using Wedding Tresses out of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I have read about a million reviews on the company and they ever all great so I am confident that they will do a lovely job.

Some shiz I've done recently

I haven't blogged in a hella long time. I blame this on 2 things: One being that I just got a new job and I really don't have the time to blog at work and 2: The fact that my dog felt the need to chew on my camera and completely destroyed it. I can't take pictures of anything so basically if I blog about anything I've done I can't take any pictures to document it. I NEED to get a new camera soon.

Anyway, I am ALMOST done my invitations. I have to finish up printing about 20-30 more RSVPs and address the envelopes and I am done. If you read one of my previous posts you'd know that I am making personalized RSVPs in hopes that I don't get people adding uninvited guests and/or their children. This is what they look like. They were a pain in the ass, but with a little tutorial on mail merging I got the hang of it quickly.

Favors

In addition to the sandalwood fans we will have available for each guest I plan on making buckeyes and putting 2 for each guest in mint green favor boxes I bought at Michael's. My aunt makes amazing buckeyes and plans on helping me make between 300-400, depending on how many people RSVP to the wedding.

These are the favor boxes, except mine are green.
This is the best picture of buckeyes I can get. When my aunt makes them she covers them completely with chocolate so they actually resemble a buckeye a bit less, but they look prettier than these. Making these should provide for a fun-filled day of swearing and third degree burns. I thoroughly look forward to this day.

Some signs for the reception

With the inspiration from Tdiddy's bio I made these signs. I plan on filling a couple of galvanized buckets with the sandalwood fans I purchased and putting the signs, 'beat the heat' and putting them in a few different locations outside, provided it doesn't rain.
I made these signs to put next to the small baskets I plan on putting my photo sharing cards in.

Also, I made these signs to add to the baskets where I plan to put the after party directions.

I quit my job.

For any of you who have been following my ever-growing hatred for my current job I am proud to announce I am finally leaving the evil empire. After three and a half years of employment and two and a half years of hatred I am finally leaving this place.

When I announced my resignation people were genuinely shocked. I think the shock wasn't from the fact that I was leaving, but over the fact that someone actually had the balls to leave the company. No one leaves this company. NO ONE. Every time I told someone outside the company that I was leaving I got the same response, "...but you work for XXXXX company, no one leaves." Yup, I know. Let me just give you an example. Out of the 25 or so finance people that I work closely with I am one of 2 people under the age of 45. And out of those 20 people, 18 of them have been here for 20+ years. 20+ years at the same company. Granted, they have had several different jobs, but still, it's pretty insane. All the people here are all about job security and do not care about the opportunities that are out there. Oh well, their loss I guess.

New veil

A few weeks ago I decided that I look absolutely ridiculous in a birdcage veil. Well, maybe not ridiculous, but I think my veil doesn't fit the way it was supposed to so it looks a bit ridiculous. I however, love the barrette that went along with the birdcage veil, and since it's detachable I will probably put that somewhere on my head.

A few months ago JennyGrl from the Boston board got married and posted some of her pictures. I fell in love with her veil, and low and behold, she wanted to sell it. Yesterday I finally went and got the thing from her. It's an Erica Koesler bubble veil. It's definitely not something I would see myself in, but it's beautiful and I love it. Now I just have to figure out a hair style that would look good with it. Originally I was going to wear a low loose ponytail to one side and curl it all up and have side-swept bangs to the other side, but I feel like with this kind of veil and you need to wear your hair up and in the back otherwise it looks weird. Any suggestions for hair styles are welcomed.

Make-up trial

I had my make-up trial with Sam from Girly Junk. Although she is a little hard to get a hold of and hard to lock in a time for a trial she is awesome. Judging from how many times she has had to switch my trial around to accommodate brides and their changing needs I am certain that on the day of my wedding she will go to great lengths to make sure everything is perfect.

I told her I liked the smokey eye look. I don't wear anything on my lips typically, so I told her to keep it simple. I also have really weird eye lids that fold up a bit, so any time I put any eye make up on I end up with creases and my eye make-up looks like crap. She put fake lashes on me to see how I liked them, even though she said they were completely unnecessary since I have naturally long eyelashes anyway.

Overall I liked the look a lot. I am going to nix the fake eyelashes and lighten up the eyes. The make-up lasted all night and didn't crease at all so I was very satisfied. Sam was SUPER quick--I think the trial was about 35 minutes tops. Here are the pics. Let me know what you think. *DISCLAIMER* I had braces put on a few months back and I think they look absolutely horrible. Also, because of the braces they needed to pull one of my front teeth (the 3rd one over from the front) so when I smile you can see the missing tooth a bit. I've sworn off smiling until the wedding when the braces are off and I am not missing a tooth.

After-party

I went to a wedding recently on a golf course in the middle of no where. We knew going to the wedding that there would be an after party. One of the groomsmen owns a mansion right on the golf course and he offered his house up to prolong the festivities. SWEET! Except that at the end of the wedding the DJ announced there would be an after party and neglected to tell us the address. We finally got a hold of the bride who gave us the address, but for some reason my GPS wasn't picking it up. We drove around like fools for about a half hour looking for said house and finally drove home when we couldn't find it.

After this incident I swore I would make direction cards to the after party after our wedding. Our after-party is about 15-20 minutes away from the reception location, leaving much room for getting lost. Originally I was going to add the directions to the directions insert in our invitations, but I figured people would just leave them at home which would be pretty counterproductive to my original plan. I am planning on making a little basket or something and putting them at various locations around the reception so people can pick them up if they plan to come. Here they are.

I like this..

My Garter

Though I am not the biggest fan of the garter toss and even though we haven't decided if we're doing it or not, I went ahead and bought a garter on ebay from http://stores.ebay.com/Avys-Bridal-Boutique. I think it's pretty sweet. It was free shipping and only cost $11.99.

I LOVE YOU, mail merge tool

Because I am anal about these invitations and I have convinced myself I am not going to have anyone RSVP with an extra uninvited yest guest I have decided to make individual RSVPs. Each couple will have an RSVP with their actual names on it. There's going to be no fill-in-the-blanks with your flavor of the week or adding your 2 year old brat child to the guest list. None of that. The names on the RSVP are the names of the people that are invited to the wedding. NO ONE ELSE.

After making that decision a long time ago, I knew tackling them would be another story. In my own mind I thought it was going to be the easiest thing ever. Make a template of what I wanted it to look like and then throw each guests name in. Print them out one by one and, tada, I would be done. Yea...not so much.

I didn't want to use 120 different pieces of paper when I could get by on 40 or so. Killing innocent trees just to finish these invitations would be wrong. I put a post up on P&E on The Knot and a wonderful woman "Terribridelee" gave me step by step instructions on how to mail merge. This saved me hours of work and about 50 pieces of cardstock. Thanks, Terri, you ROCK!

Once I have more time on my hands I will post step by step instructions with screen shots so everyone will know how to do it.

Another invitations post...

So, over the weekend I had a bit of free time, which never typically happens. I managed to finish all my taping and stuffing. I still have to figure out a way to make my RSVPs without using another 100 pieces of paper or so. I am making individual RSVPs with each guests' name instead of a generic 'fill-in-the-blank' type of RSVP.

I cannot figure out for the life of me how to tackle my RSVPs. I am using publisher for everything else so I kinda want to stick with MS Publisher. I want to be able to print 4-6 RSVPs per sheet of paper. It would be easy if I was printing the exact same thing, then I could just switch the # of copies per sheet, but I want to be able to change the guest's name in each one.

Basically I am trying to figure out how to duplicate the RSVP 6 times on the piece of paper and be able to go in, change the guest's name on the RSVP, add the crop and bleed marks and print them out. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO IT!! I will welcome any help.

Birdcage Veil--Finally done

Bharnett on the Boston Knot board recommended an etsy.com seller (qgdesigns) who made custom veils. I wanted a birdcage, but didn't really like the whole flower or feather deal. I wanted something very simple and not over the top. She had a crystal hair comb that I really liked and I asked her if you could possibly make a birdcage veil with the hair comb and the netting I liked. I've waited over a month for this piece and I am so happy with it. You can detach the netting from the comb, which is great seeing as I am am definitely not going to want to wear the netting all day.

Accomodations=Accommodations HUGE MISTAKE #1

If you look at my inserts below you will notice I spelled 'accommodations' incorrectly. Pretty sweet that I realized this when I was standing in line at Staples right before I was about to get all 65 pages of inserts professionally cut. What is NOT SWEET is that I wasted 65 pieces of linen paper and pretty much half an ink cartridge printing out misspelled inserts. If you read one of my below posts you would know that when printing my inserts I put my printer on 'maximum DPI' print setting which prints at a very high resolution, except that it takes about 5 minutes per sheet of paper. 65 x 5 mins=5.5 hours or so WASTED on printing something that I ended up in the recycle bin.

My fiance will not let me live this one down. He knows I am a spelling Nazi, so he thought it was funny that myself nor spell check picked up on this HUGE mistake.

How did spell check not pick this up, you ask? Well, I used 2 text boxes when making the insert. 1 text box I made like 2 weeks ago and then I went back and did text box #2 yesterday. 1 text box that said 'accommodations' and another text box with the actual pertinent information about the accommodations. Before I printed I ran spell check, but I forgot that I actually had 2 text boxes and I only ran spell check on the first on. Hence, the reason why spell check never picked it up.

In hindsight it could have been way, way, way worse. I could have had them all cut at Staples which would have been a waste of about $10, taped them onto my cover stock and wasted about 60 pages of cover stock ($16 or so). Or even worse---MAILED THEM OUT!!!!!!!!!!!! All-in-all, not a very bad mistake. Crisis averted.

Inserts

I finally finished the directions and accommodations inserts. This is what they look like. I am printing them out myself, having the cut at Staples, and then attaching them to leaf green card stock from Paper Source as a backing.

New phone..NICE

Seeing as my friends are pretty anti-social and prefer texting over just picking up the damn phone and calling me, I have been persuaded to get a phone with a keyboard to make texting these said friends much easier. Why, you ask? Well, because texting on small phones when you have long fingernails is pretty much impossible and T9 blows ass. When you try to type 'beer' into my cell phone it comes up as 'adds.' I don't know about you, but I text the word 'beer' a helluva lot more than I text 'adds.'

Paul and I got matching cell phones and finally got our asses onto a family plan. Yes, I know the matching cell phone thing is lame as hell, but we got an awesome deal so it was hard to pass up. Today when I return home from work I should have 2 nice shiny new Samsung Glydes sitting on my doorstep.

Now, the next time I text 'adds' instead of 'beer' it's probably because I've had too much beer and can't spell correctly.

Update on the tape

So after a while or searching today I came across a seller on Amazon selling 6 roll packs for $1.01. Yes, that's right, like .15 cents a piece. That's AWESOME! I ordered 30 rolls just to be safe. I think it came up to $15 or so with shipping. I don't think I'll be bitching about tape ever again.

Double sided tape

Yes, you might think it's ridiculous that I am posting about double sided tape, but I thought it was necessary. I have 120 invitations to make. And no, I cannot use glue-dots for this, otherwise I would. Thanks to everyone who insisted I used glue dots, but they look like shit.

Thing I need to tape:

• 120 5.5 x 5.5 invitation mats (green card stock) to metallic pocketfold
• 120 5.25 x 5.25 invitations to invitation mat
• directions insert (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing
• accommodations insert (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing
• RSVP (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing

So far I have taped all 120 invitations mats to the pocketfolds and taped about 70 directions inserts to the card stock backing and I've used 8 friggen rolls of tape. I will, at minimum, need another 15-20 rolls of tape to finish. So far I've bought all the tape at the dollar store close to my house, but now they're sold out and will not reorder it for me. I've gone to 4 other dollar stores and nothing.

Every single other place I have looked it costs like $3.50 a roll. I refuse to pay that much for effin TAPE, especially since I need like 15-20 more rolls. I don't care what brand of tape it is. I just need double sided tape for less than $2.50 a roll. I think I am going to go to Target today and see if they have some.

It's starting to get annoying. I think I've spent more money on gas trying to look for cheap tape than I would have if I just sucked it up and paid the extra money to buy the damn expensive tape. Oh well.

Suits.

We are getting our suits through Jim's formal wear. They are Alfresco. We did this a decently long time ago, pre blog, so I never mentioned anything about it. Paul wanted formal tuxes, but I refused. We have an 11 am ceremony and with our luck it will either be raining or hot as balls. I am sure the guys won't appreciate wearing black suits. I convinced Paul that he would like these. I LOOOOVE them. I told him if he wants he can wear man-dles too. I doubt he'll go for it.