My first tornado

I'm interrupting the constant stream of wedding updates to talk about something bigger and hopefully selfless. On June 1st, multiple tornadoes touched down and tore the western part of the state into shreds. I didn't even know that it was in the forecast. I was completely self absorbed in wedding crap or one of my other many first world problems. I don't think I even knew about the aftermath until DAYS after when I finally turned on the tv to hear about the devastation. 

Members of my company banded together and gave back to the community. We rolled up our sleeves. We revved up chainsaws. We brought in front loaders (yes, one person brought their front loader, thank goodness). We spread out in teams across different locations. And we made a difference.

It was a great afternoon out of the office. We built connections with folks that we don't normally work with. We applied teamwork We helped people.

Photos from a backyard in Southbridge, MA.


That pile of rubbish used to be a shed.

 

Before the devastation, the trees were so thick that you
couldn't see the neighbors on the other side of the creek.



*All photos taken by me*

We have a package?

Items that come in either a box or an envelope that are larger than our 4"x4" mailbox are delivered to the main office of our complex. The concierge (whom tends to be quite flaky) will then place a post-it note on our mailbox to let us know we have something to pick up.

Me: Hey, we have a package. What'd you order? I didn't order anything.

Jake: I don't know. I don't remember ordering something.

Me: Go get it.

*Jake returns with GIANT box*

Me: I seriously don't remember ordering anything. What did you order?

Jake: I don't know.

Me: Oh maybe it's something off of our registery from one of your aunts. I don't know anyone else that would just send us stuff.

Jake: Maybe.

Me: I bet it is. Hand me my knife.

*I carefully slices through the tape to open the box*

Me: Oooh, it's from Crate & Barrel. Definitely, didn't order anything.

Jake: Oh boy!

*I open the note attached (a super, cute, and sweet note)*

Me: IT'S FROM VAL AND MATT!!!! We got a present from Val and Matt!!

"Quick, snap a picture for the blog. Do you know what you are doing?"

Viv Martini Glass via Crate & Barrel
They match the existing set of wine and champagne glasses that Jake purchased awhile back.

Classic Margarita Glass via Crate & Barrel
Jake's Our margarita collection just doubled! We won't have
to use my our martini glasses at our next margarita party.



Thank you for the wonderful surprise Val and Matt! It was a sweet ending to a long day. We will put these to good use for sure.

43 days. The counter on our registery says 44 days. I'm going to go with the previous just to apply more pressure on myself.

Invitations: Cost

Anyone want to take a guess as to how much our invitations cost? Lower. Lower. Still lower. You'll never guess.

Design: $0.00
 - Designed it ourselves
 - I can't even begin to guess how much it would cost for a graphic designer.

Labor: $0.00
 - Did it ourselves myself, mostly
 - You don't even want to know how many hours have gone into printing, cutting, punch, gluing, etc. went into this. I would be rich if I even charged myself minimum wage.

Postage: $107.55 (rsvp - $0.44/each, domestic - $0.88/each, 3 international, 5 sent in one package to be hand delivered to family, 4 hand delivered locally, and one for a keepsake)
 - I already knew that because of the shape (square), our invites would be slightly more. But I was crossing my fingers in hopes that they didn't tip the scales. Thank god they didn't!

Reusable materials: approximately $100 (after discounts and taxes, but not rolling this into the final cost)
 - White gel pen used for the "please recycle" message
 - Stamps of our graphic (Purchased from Paper Source. We have both the large and the small one (two for whatever reason my bridal brain came up with back in December of 2009!)
 - ColorBox Pigment Stamp pads in black and scarlett
 - VersaMarkStamp pad
 - Clear embossing powder
 - Paper punches (border and corner)
 - Embossing heat gun
 - PVA glue (left over from lord only knows what project)
 - Printer and ink. I got this printer at 50% off waaaaay back when.
 - Font

Raw Materials: $76.11!!!!
 - This amount does not include shipping as other paper products were also ordered at this time. All paper was ordered from Paper and More. I highly reccommend them!
 - 12x12 100# cardstock in black for the enclosure
 - 8.5x11 100# cardstock in cherry red for the invitation and name card backing
 - 8.5x11 80# cardstock in bright white for the invitation, information card, rsvp card, and name card
 - 4 bar envelopes in bright white
 - 6x6 square envelopes in bright white
 - 96.75 yards of twine. Barely made a dent in my giant spool of twine.

Grand total: $183.66
 - Each invitation suite cost just over $0.88!!! $0.885 to be exact!!!
 - $2.20 including all postage for invites shipped within the USA. Can you believe that?!?!  The postage was the bulk of it!
 - Paula told me that our invites could have easily run $1300 if we had a real staionary vendor do them.


45 days.

Ring-a-ding-a-ling

Having my ring in my grubby hands is a bad, bad idea. I should have just had my maid of honor keep my ring until she flew in for the wedding.

We started ring shopping almost a year ago. I knew exactly what I wanted, but was having trouble finding it. 6 months later, we returned to Oregon. We tried visiting the original ring that I had identified as a potential, but was dissappointed. It's a good thing we double checked!. However, we did find it on this trip.

Enough jabber.

My precious! Not an eternity band.

2.6 mm band, just like I wanted.

Don't they look fabulous together?

Ignore my outgrown/chipping polish.

Low profile as to not rub against the prongs of the e-ring.

Look, the back of the bands match!

Jake's ring has a different story. His idea for what he wanted changed quite a bit from start to finish. At first, he wanted a plain band with a shiny finish. But in the end he wanted a band with a brushed finish (matte). In addition, Jake wanted it engraved with my Chinese last name.

Around Christmas, I decided to get him his own engagement ring. My reasoning was that it took me a year to become used to wearing mine (inconsistently). I thought he might want to practice wearing a ring. I purchased a tungsten ring from Overstock.

When it came time look for his ring, he knew what he wanted, but couldn't find it. A brushed finished would "dull" and begin to look like a worn polished finish over time. I can see this occuring if you do lots of manual labor with your hands, but it's probably a non-issue with Jake. While white gold and platinum rings are engravable, none of them came in a plain brushed finished. There was always extra embellishments, like a polished edge. Tungsten was the only type of ring that came in the right finish we wanted, but it's not engravable. 

Rather than face dissappointment and having to make decisions (he hates make decisions, especially when pressured), he chose to keep is practice band as his wedding band. We discussed upgrading his ring in a couple of years.

Close up shot, the brushed finish was hard to capture.

Even with the brushed finish, the surface is highly reflective.

47 days. 2 posts in one day...guess I'm trying to make up for the past couple of days.

*all photos by me!*

Accessories: Flower girl

Did you get your fill of cuteness after seeing our flower girl's ensemble? Well, make some more room! Here is her basket:

It's hard to believe that it started off purple. Sorry, bad blogger, I completely forgot to take "before" photo. Jake's mom gave us cute Easter baskets two Easter's ago. I decided to hang on to them. Good thing, one of them came in handy.

I painted the basket white, hand wrapped the handle with satin ribbon, lined it with a layer of tulle, and added a re-engineered silk peony. Note to DIYers. DO NOT FOLLOW IN MY FOOTSTEPS. JUST GO AND BUY A WHITE BASKET.

I spent entirely way too much time on this basket. First I started off with the wrong paint. I wanted a slightly shiny tinge to the paint, so I bought glossy acrylic paint. Glossy acrylic does not stick to basket material very well. After two coats of the gloss, I finally went with a coat of regular acrylic. Finally the purple was gone. However, now I was left with a coarse texture, so another coat of the gloss. 4, maybe 5 coats of paint later, I had a white basket.

I got lazy with the paint job, so I tried to hide the imperfections with a couple layers of tulle on the inside of the basket. Hot glue + tulle = ouch.

Also, ribbon wrapping a curved handle is not an easy task. After awhile I had to tell myself "screw it, no one will notice, just get it done."

Not long after we started planning our wedding, I became smitten with hair flowers. I wanted a big one in my hair, a statement piece if you will. I went out and purchased a silk peony, feathers, and a hair clip. That material sat around for months and months. About a year later, I completely scrapped the idea, but couldn't return the flower as I had already tore it apart (oops).

I proceeded to re-engineer the flower. Layers of tulle were hot glued in to create a fuller flower. The flower was then hot glued to layers of felt to create a base. I wanted the flower to be usable for multiple things, not just a basket. I added two ways to thread ribbon through the base.

Maybe M will want to wear the flower as a belt after the ceremony. Although, this flower is probably as big as her head!

The ends of the ribbon were sealed over a candle flame to keep them from fraying.

I'm contemplating getting her a floral headband...

via Pretty Little Things

47 days.

*personal photos unless noted*