Tit for Tat and General Awesomeness

Trolling around the internet on friday I found another fabulous etsy vendor that I need to share:
I found them reference on a design site for their totally fun "Keep Calm" spoof calendars. If you don't know the Keep Calm series please see: here then return. Oh and while you're there, I'm planning on basing my entire kitchen redesign around the "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen" poster. Can't wait!

Anyway Little Brown Pen has spoof calendars for men and women. Here are the women's:




So yeah, I bought a calendar nearly 4 months into the year-- THAT is how great they are. The men's are as follows:
January: Keep Warm and Get it On
February: Play Guitar and Look Sensitive
March: Remove Shirt and Pretend It's Warm
April: Drive Fast and Hydroplane
May: Buy Flowers and Sell Hard
June: Pump Fist and Drink Beer
July: Fire Up and Sear Meat
August: Shave Chest and Suck in Gut
September: Watch Replay and Curse Interception
October: Carve Pumpkins and Scare Children
November: Eat Turkey and Fall Asleep
December: Say Thanks and Exchange for Porn

BUT what I liked best about it is it's proof of concept for an idea I've been playing around with for The Future Mrs. Darcy. Basically, when you order the calendar, after you pay they send you a pdf of the calendar which you then print yourself. So it keeps the costs down as much as you want them. I've already talked with several brides about commercially printing the invitations/RSVP and everything included in the mail and then printing everything else (programs, table cards, table numbers, menus, etc) at local copy stores but if you haven't noticed (because I certainly have) commercial printing is expensive! I feel horrible when I have to tell brides who want 25 invitations that it's going to cost nearly as much as the 100 invitations I quote on etsy. Especially since a lot of times I bet people are only having 50ish guests (if you think most invitations are mailed out to two people) because they are trying to have a wedding that fits their budget. Anyway, I'm planning on posting some listings on etsy for print your own soon and I was very glad to see someone else already showing it works, even if it is on a smaller scale.

I also came across something fabulous on Big Cartel (which is an etsy-like site).

A lot of the prints are very macabre but I love it. Love love love it. All the photos below are of the image then a detail so you can read the text.







And lastly, because this is such a wonderful combination of my husbands love for zombies* and me, I have to share:


*Exhibit A: these were our Halloween costumes this past year.

Busy Busy

Hello one and all! I'm busy at work coming up with some designs for M. who is looking for some invitations that have "the overall feel is true Southern Comfort, imagine old quilts and miss-matched dishware. I love texture and would like to use some type of real wood if possible" and using one of my favorite Martha Perfect Palettes: marigold and pewter. Totally cool, I know, so I'm all into that at the moment.

BUT-- I wanted to let you know that the voting is open on Minted for the baby shower invitations. I have two designs in the running so if you like-- you can go vote here.


&

And if THAT isn't enough to make your Thursday go by quick enough I found this which would be an awesome addition to my Harry Potter/Natural non-flower table centerpieces:
From Once Wed -- the rest of the post, filled more drool-worthy gorgeous pictures can be found here.

And LASTLY if you still need more:
This is awesome and if I have to make it "wedding-y" I'd say just about everyone in our wedding party would have run around shrieking with joy like a girl if they got these. Bear Sleeping Bag (I can't remember where I saw it first but oh if I had to guess I'd probably say Mighty Goods, Swiss Miss, Not Martha or Pygmalion in a Blanket)

And these are my new favorite blogs: I Suwannee, The Lil Bee, 100 Layer Cake, and Shelter.

Whew, and if you're STILL here go to flickr and search for "dutch tulip fields".

And with THAT I bid you good day.

Morning People

Let it be known that I am NOT a morning person. Or really a night owl. I'm a sleeper. Back in the day I could sleep 12, even 14, hours no problem. I think today my ideal amount of sleep per night is about 9 hours which I was pretty good at getting and... enter the dog.

Bailey does not seem to have the same views as I do on sleep. She doesn't understand the concept of weekends so everyday she wakes up around 6:45 and progressively gets louder and louder until we take her out at 7:30. Also I should mention that she was a VERY shy puppy when we got her and we read that we should keep her in our room to sleep so when wakes up at 6:45-- we know it.

Anyway, standing outside on Saturday morning in the freezing cold waiting for the pup to do her puppy business I started wondering if I'd ever get to sleep in again. Because it starts with the dog and then once you have kids, I'm sure it takes like a decade before they understand the joys of sleeping in, and quickly through my mind flitted "...First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage..."

And I thought, damn, that's a slightly less out there idea for a baby shower invitation than my last one so upstairs I went and:
So the submission deadline was supposed to end last night at midnight but it doesn't look like anything is closed down so maybe a week until voting starts? I'll keep checking and let you know.

Have a great Monday*


*House and 24 are on tonight-- see Monday can be tolerable!

Modern Bride

(image of bride by ePi.Longo on flickr)

My husband recently has started creating iPhone apps and I suggested a wedding variety app after seeing that the ones available don't look so hot but we're not sure what the best app would be. SO I figured I'd ask you: is there anything the iPhone could do to help make your wedding planning smoother?

If your suggestion is chosen I may contact you for finer points and you'd get the app for free. What I think would be even more fabulous is if we got a bunch of suggestions then I'd let everyone vote and whichever app end up getting the most votes, everyone who voted for that one would get a free copy.*

So submit your ideas and tell your friends!


*I'm now told that Apple has dictated you can only give away 100 free copies of an app but really I would be shocked/overjoyed/REALLY shocked if we had such a voting turn out that I would find a way to make it up to those over 100 posts that voted.

Cake Topper

I'm sad to say that I don't troll Etsy probably as much as I should considering what talented people there are out there. Then again, I can't remember the last time I bought something anywhere- be in store or online or mass produced or handmade (EXCEPT MY NEW COMPUTER!!! YAY!!!!! MORE RAM!!!*). But what I do like to do, every month or so, I see who likes my shop. I know, so self-centered, but I guess like goes to like and I found the coolest little shop-- or rather she found me, which then let me find her... but semantic aside how fun are these:

Naked Peggies (great name as well)

AND these:And it gets better. Here is the description that goes along with the Talladega Nights duo:

SALE!

I was watching Talladega Nights the other night and was inspired to paint these. Shake and Bake!!

If you love Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr. as much as I do you hafta have these! They are 2.5" and proud!

They are each handpainted with non-toxic paints and finished with a non-toxic gloss varnish.

Not intended for those under 3 years old and those who will still eat the occasional raisin off the floor.

She seems like a real person, right? In case you haven't already figure it's out-- I love conversational writing. When people starting writing dissertations and waxing lyrical I can't help but wonder why they're trying so hard. Also I think I watched Talladega Nights the same night she did. It was the weekend of Taco Bell, Talladega Nights, Old School and box wine. Klassy weekend, huh? ;)

AND better (-er)... she's from Boston. Which means if I'm a lucky girl I can go to Grand or SOWA** and hopefully see these darlings in person.***

So, again, Naked Peggies is the name of the store which carries many cool peggies so check it out!

*Sorry, I totally nerded out there.
**AH! If you wait long enough on the SOWA home page there's a rotating series of pictures and one is of John Malkovich (or John Malkovich's evil twin) at SOWA. Why do I never see famous people?
***Also I have no idea if Naked Peggies are sold anywhere but on Etsy but both Grand and SOWA are cool place where if she DOES sell them elsewhere those are places I'll check first.

Minted

Hey-there hi-there ho-there!

I just wanted to let everyone know that the Every Second Counts birthday card is now available at Minted.com. You can get to it by clicking here.

Here's a little reminder of what it looks like:

They're also having a new "Baby Shower" invite for

Modern moms-to-be and their friends search high and low for baby shower invitations that say "fun and modern", not "cutesy".

Yeah... I think I can do not "cutesy". :) I just submitted this one which I'm calling "For Apatow" (as in Judd Apatow, of Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad and many other examples of awesomeness)
So as you can see it's roughly a billion times less cutesy than most baby shower invites but it's for people who are pregnant and - shocker - have a sense of humor and I think a lot of times we forget the two can overlap.

Lastly, and I hate to mention this, let me know if you see a boob instead of a belly in the design. I think it funny (don't ask my why) that babies can pop out their mom's belly buttons and I really liked how the "p" in "knocked up" just fit right in but it's a belly not a boob. :)

Harry Potter in the hizzouse!

So my wonderful lovely friend R. emailed me the other day asking:

in your online searches have you seen anything about how to have a harry potter/fantasy wedding? i can find stuff for little kids birthday parties. im thinking things like instead of floral centerpieces, candlescapes with river rocks and dried moss, and there will be lanterns placed around the property. where/how can i incorporate other things like that?!

which of course is awesome sounding so I went all crazy today and found stuff I thought would be cool and I was half way into entering it all into a big inDesign document which I would pdf for her and I thought, "Perhaps there are others. Perhaps I should share"

And here we are. Any images that are small you can click to make larger.

Elegant rustic


First of all my scanner crapped out on me but I was able to find some of the photos that I had flagged online. This is one of them. (Tee hee this was just for R. but we'll keep it)

I think it has that floating candle vibe which I’ve always liked about the Hogwarts Dining Hall (which is apparently the dining hall of Christ Church College’s in Oxford if you’re looking for specific pics but I’m sure you knew that). I’m sure it’s a little flowery-er than you were thinking but I think replacing the flowers with moss and such would get the idea going. The one downside to this one is that the centerpiece is tall which makes it harder for people to talk. But that might not bother you or you could scale it down.

http://www.brides.com/planning/flowers/gallery/editorspick/detail/164942?f=3126%3a58&f=664%3a2023&offset=9#_chip=0


Images from Brides.com “Go Green”


These were the other images from my book that I found online, conveniently in the same section. Instead of searching for Harry Potter or fantasy I started looking at the elements you were looking for- moss, candles, etc and most places categorize them as “rustic”, “eco”, or something like that. I think that gets at half of the Harry Potter theme but adding the candles and whatnot will give it more of an elegant- exclusive children’s magic school vibe.

I think the crazy plants in the second one again, might not be hitting the mark, but definitely will give a magic-y non-standard look.

Oh and everything is green (color not environment) b/c that’s what I had flagged for myself back in the day.

http://www.brides.com/planning/ecochicweddings/feature/slide/164830/?nav=redirect_slideshow#_slide=164832

Martha Martha Martha

I thought these candles were kind of cool. When I think Harry Potter/fantasy I also conjure up the spells classes with all the cool sciency looking glass stuff. Also I didn’t get a chance to search for it but try “enchanted” or “fairytale” weddings to see if that gets at the theme without being specifically Harry Potter.

http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/photogallery/50-great-centerpieces?lnc=00e72f09fba1d110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=lpg_Homepage&lpgStart=1&currentslide=11&currentChapter=1

Mood Lighting

So I liked the look of all the candles and then OMG - there’s a book in the middle too. Fabulousness. This site had a bunch of cool stuff on the page so I kept it to the label not just the one post.

www.dcnearlyweds.com/labels/Decorations.html

Jackpot
(click to make larger)
I’m sure this is about 6 billion times girlier than you were thinking but it has a bunch of fun elements. I found this by searching for “beaker centerpiece” not really sure what I was going to find but I think the beakers and the fern-looking plants look cool BUUUUT I kind of freaked out when I saw the last jar on the bottom is labeled “love potion”. I think it would be hilarious if you put booze in them too. But that's just me.

http://www.stylemepretty.com/2008/11/10/real-wedding-by-james-abel-ii-5/

Birchwood Centerpiece Tutorial

Kind of self-explanatory.
http://kurtcyr.com/birchwoo.htm

Mossy Centerpiece From Blog

http://highwaytomarriage.blogspot.com/search/label/Center%20pieces

Martha Stewart is a God


The mushrooms may be a little much but this has a small tutorial about working with the moss and some info about buying stump vases. Also we used some mushroom bits in my centerpieces but they were more large abstract looking leaves or pod-like.

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.58031cf9775720e593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=26d552c56ed38110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=f66452c56ed38110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=print&currentslide=1&rsc=communitytools_gardening&lnc=8599cf380e1dd010VgnVCM1000005b09a00aRCRD&page=1

You can see the mushroomy bits a little in my knottie bio- scroll down to flowers: http://community.theknot.com/cs/ks/user/default.aspx?UserName=kreinertsen&m=1&MsdVisit=1

More mossy stuff
These had a little more whimsy in them.

http://blog.kimvallee.com/archive/2007/07/17/trend-report-the-raw-materials-are-the-honor-guests-of.aspx

Now more stumps
I think this has a link where to buy as well.

http://www.stylemepretty.com/2007/10/16/wedding-details-by-small-stump/

Nice mix of nature and elegance

This site has a lot of looks like this. Fun and out of the box. And yes, I've mentioned them on the blog before.

http://hatchcreativestudio.com/

The second photo is by the same people but from here:
http://www.stylemepretty.com/2008/08/21/table-inspirations-by-hatch-creative-studio/

I LOOOOVE this place


If nothing else it gives you an idea of what is out there. Also since I’m thinking of it now my cousin once told me that she gets all of her candles at Church supply store b/c they’re much cheaper there.

I’m not sure if the lanterns come with the place but I think Pearl River has lanterns that are pretty cheap.

http://www.jamaligarden.com/

Ok well it's not one definitive answer but hopefully enough ideas that can be cobbled together to something out of this world. Although if I've totally missed the mark, R., just let me know and I'll keep working at it. :)