Cards, Birthday

Do you send birthday cards? I try. I really do. When I read the Happiness Project last year one of the resolutions that resonated most strongly was her resolution to send an email to her friends on their birthdays. There are a lot of people I love and it’s not really sufficient to just love them alone in my apartment, I need to reach out. So I’ve been trying to send birthday cards religiously. Even if it’s the only time I reach out in the year it’s something and the thought of getting a card and mailing it in advance of their birthday seems to mean a lot to people.

 

  For a while I bought Rifle cards in bulk but at this point, with David in school and in a much more expensive city, we are DIYing. This afternoon I sat down and designed four cards that will hopefully cover the birthdays of sisters and friends and cousins and coworkers and the babies of friends. I thought tomorrow I’d swing by the printer and get a bunch run off and keep them in my desk at work with regular old Paper Source envelopes. I’ve set up my birthday alarm and hopefully I’ll keep on top of it. I hope they print well.

 

 

All cards the product of me and my computer.

 

Envelope Liners

Mary asked how I managed to line the envelopes for my friend Judy's shower invitations so here is the easier DIY ever.    Get an envelope, pretty paper (I used the cover of the Paper Source catalogue), a pencil, scissors and glue stick or glue pen.

Trace your envelope onto the wrong side of the paper.  Cut it out.

Slide the paper down until the top looks like it's about right.  Trim the bottom of the liner off so it will fit inside your envelope.

Put a little glue on the bottom and slide the liner into the envelope.  Glue the flap portion and BOOM!  Done.   Lamest DIY ever, so effing easy. 

Shower Invitations

My friend Judy is getting married in 75 days and we are throwing her a shower.  I designed these invitations and a matching recipe card.  I'm lining envelopes in gorgeous paper and addressing them in silver ink.   There is something about silver pens and stacks of perfectly even cards that make me so unbelievably happy.

Invitations

Today my first batch of RSVP cards came in. We got the gorg Paper Source Invitations and my gorgous best friend Mary did the calligraphy. Because the paper source RSVPs were the same price again as the invitation, and I am very poor I found the botanical print of a peony and hacked it down and had it printed by a local printer as a postcard, tied them to the invites with very very thin grey wool from my parents sheep (so basically free, hip and organic but mostly free). I also gave in to the mad multi-stamp craze. I know I'm biased but I think they are they are the most beautiful invitations anyone ever had. Just saying.

P.S.

RSVP cards make me want to punch a baby. Miss Manners and Emily Post all say that people can damn well tell me if they are coming of not. Paper Source says that RSVP cards cost as much as invitations plus stamps plus envelopes. I say that people can reply by email or phone for f*cksake. I might get over this.

Invitations

The invitations are unbelievably beautiful. I cheaped out and had them flat printed, I nearly had a major emotional breakdown at the thought of trying to get a printer not to bugger them up if I designed them myself so I succumbed to the lovely of Paper Source and they are everything I wanted.

I am also in an intensive six-week training course for my new job which I hate, both the training and the job. So I've kind of disappeared but I'll be back. I promise.

Program

What did you put/what are you putting in your programs? I don't want them to be stupid. I am concerned about stupid. It's a problem. K. Thanks.

Prenup of a different colour

Today is our prenuptial investigation by our parish priest. He's basically going to ask David if he's being forced and ask me if we intend to have children and make sure we both know what we're getting in for. It's kind of exciting and lovely and final. Calling it a 'prenuptial investigation' makes it a little scary but I'm looking forward.

In prettier news: I kind of want to have a Quaker Wedding Certificate. I think it's lovely to have everyone who's there sign our 'wedding certificate' rather than a book which will probably never get seen. But we are having a Catholic wedding. And people might think it's silly and contrived. And even though I read APW a lot I am still worried about people thinking I'm silly and contrived. So maybe we'll leave that out. It is lovely though. If I were to have one, this might be the one I want.

Place Cards

So my Biddy of Honour/Alpha Maid/Head Biddy in Charge is a genius. You probably want to pay her a lot of money to plan your wedding. Barn wedding means no simple cards set on tables for place cards. Which had kind of been my thought. Something has to weight them down. So Mary thought of using tiny little bottles with a few tiny little flowers (very in keeping with my tons-of-flowers down the middle of the table thought) and manilla tags with people's names on them at each place. This is genius. Because, as I've said, Mary-Berry is a genius (I wanted to write Mary-Barry so she could be Mary-BarryWhite). It's going to be stellar I tell you. STELLAR.

bottles, tags and the flowers are rockroses, which are lovely and grow like crazy in southern PA in the summer

Bad Bad Bride

Getting married makes you feel like a crazy person. Sometimes you know just what kind of calligraphy you like and want and then you see something else and you WANT THAT. But it's too late and you decided you liked the other one and your best friend has been practicing for like weeks and you need to chill the eff out and eat a bagel. Except there is no bagels in the house. PLEASE SOMEONE GO BUY ME A BAGEL!!! (someone means David who is at work, GAH) So anyway I still like my other calligraphy and so whatever. But this is pretty too. Just in case you were looking for pretty calligraphy. I am going to go pick out wedding vows from the nice book the priest gave me. Whine.

Lovely writing by Genius Patricia Mumau

Swoonington Steele

Tara Jones is rocking my world in a major way right now. I wish I could write pretty.

Lovely Lovely Ink

Besty Dunlap has pretty pretty pretty calligraphy. Hannah loves the calligraphy. I want lovely envelopes, lovely place cards, lovely lovely lovely Reserved signs for the first few pews for our families. Maybe Hannah should learn to write prettily or get a friend with pretty writing to help (you know who you are)

Dear Mr. Boddington

I love David a lot but will you marry me? K. Thanks.

Love and kisses,

Hannah

xoxoxox

Mr Boddington's Bodacious Stationary (not really the name but WHATEVA)

Guestbook

Guest books suck. This is well regarded as fact. Which is why there are typewriter guestbooks, and index card guestbooks and why Martha (why do I LOVE YOU SO EFFING MUCH WOMAN?!) has an entire photo gallery of crazy-ass suggestions.

Liz at Chic on the Cheap is a genius and made a photo book of pictures of family weddings going back to the early 1900s that people could thumb through and look and and sign. Apparently it hangs out around their house and people look at it when they come over. Holler. I especially like this idea since all four of my grandparents are "no-longer-with-us" and it I like the idea of placing our wedding, our marriage within the greater context of our families. I am the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter. My mother married a foreigner and my grandmother did too. Let's acknowledge and rock these things in a guestbook. Please.

Deanna, the very very cool illustrator who documented her wedding shenanigans here, and her husband put together a book of photos, movie tickets, receipts, notes and letters and used that as a guestbook. Much much cooler than a typewriter (note: typewriter is super cool, just don't understand what I'm going to DO with all that typewritten paper. What to DO with it is the issue, ditto index cards and vintage postcards).

So dear David: Can I please have some wedding pictures from your family past? Since I have a lot of mine floating around.

Pictures: Top is Mum, June, the third generation to wear that dress, bottom is my great-grandmother, also called June, the first to wear that dress.