Wedding and Invitations

My opinion on wedding invitations: If you have the money to flaunt the existence of your wedding in your budget then do it! If you’d rather spend your money on an open bar, real flowers, or better wedding favors than go for cheaper invitations. 

Truthfully, there aren’t many people that take a second look at your invitation unless it’s to double check the date or location of it. I’m not going to tell you that none of your guests will oogle over the expensive rhinestone you added or imposed edging or whatever. The old ladies that would never accept an invitation via email to a wedding will obsess over that little piece of paper. Personally, I would rather attend a wedding that had a better DJ or food and ambiance than one with a pretty invitation that I chucked after the wedding occurred and had a terrible night. 

That’s why I spent some time at Target, Office Max, Staples, and Michael’s trying to find an invitation that I could buy cheaply and make crafty additions to make it my own. 

My first goal was to find a printer friendly invitation that had a Tiffany Blue design that was elegant, but not overdone. It needed envelopes and RSVP cards. I bought two boxes $25 each with 50 invitations.

My mom works at an elementary school and has access to all of the fun die cuts. I wanted to add a starfish to the invitation so we cut 100 silver starfish. 

I used an x-acto knife to cut slots into the starfish and strung a black ribbon through it. I hot glued the ribbon so that it fit the invitation like a glove and all my guests needed to do was slide it down. Not only did the starfish add a nice touch but it kept the rsvp card and return envelope attached to it instead of having it roll around the envelope (I hope that makes sense). 

My mom copied the wording from her wedding invitation for ours. I loved being able to do that, it seemed so romantic to me. She found a print shop that printed all of our invitations, envelopes, rsvp cards, and return envelopes for $13. 

I bought a $3 calligraphy pen and did all of the addressing myself. It took forever, but it was fine.

I loved our invitations. It was obvious that I made them myself, but I took pride in that. So,

$50 for invitations

$13 for printing

$10 for ribbon

$100 for invitation and rsvp card postage stamps

$3 for calligraphy pen

=$176 total

Otherwise it would have been:

$3 per invitations (I sent around 80 if not more) $240 , add the printing costs unless included, and $100 postage, and a professional calligrapher would have cost me a fortune. 

I’ll keep posting wedding stuff as some of you requested. I will also update this post with more pictures (my scanner is being fickle).

Yes I Try and No I'm Not Perfect

I try to make sure my outfits are well chosen and are applicable to whatever the weather may bring. I brush my teeth every morning and every night and most afternoons. I separate my loads of white laundry into "bleach" and "non bleach" baskets. I typically have everything I might need in my purse at all times. I bought a Brita filter and two water bottles in order to be more "green" both environmentally and economically.


Admittedly, tonight was the first night that the entire bathroom was cleaned on the day in which it was assigned. {Our Cleaning Chart} Usually, Adam cleans the bathtub when he's not bogged down with work and homework and it's usually just a few days before I clean the whole bathroom again. Regardless, it gets done once a week. But I did try to make a cleaning chart that would help us keep our house up to my expectations.

And also admittedly, we went to bed just a few short hours ago wondering why our room smelt so horribly. Then I discovered the cat had peed on the bed we were comfortably set up in. After a shower, a rush of laundry, re-making the bed and recharging my computer I couldn't help but tell you all how I failed. I have failed to master the kitty litter buying scheme. I don't know what to buy to convince the cat it's worth using the box. And I haven't yet had the time (despite my lack of payed working hours as of yet) to teach the darn thing to use the toilet.

I know that some of my readers- YES I DO HAVE READERS -will find great satisfaction in knowing that I cannot control the behaviors of my pet, I almost slept in cat pee, and I'm not perfect. Not even close.

Garden Stool Bargain and Real Estate

See this "garden stool":

This is a picture from a blog I follow {The Nester}

And here: 

This picture is from {Meadow Lake}. This post even talks about how these ceramic garden stools are in so many decor magazines.

And here: (silver ones)

{Left Coast}

And finally here: Oh wait I can't show you a website that sells them because they are all sold out. Pottery barn, Target, all of them. Kicker is that they sold at around $159 each. 

But with all of the time I have to waste before my job starts I hunt Craigslist for good deals and I found one!! 

For a whopping $15, I took this baby home with me. That is of course after the original owner of this stool told us about her neighborhood and Adam and I took the chance to tour (the outside) of a home for sale that we are completely enchanted by. It makes me drool. And it had the perfect patio for my new stool! 

The back patio is huge with a wonderful black iron fence... Oh I am so so so in love.