It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Ah... the stores are covered in spider webs. Shoppers browse in fear that they might set off a decoration that will shriek, moan or thunder. It's like Christmas songs for the demented and disillusioned folk like me who treat All Hallow's Eve like Christmas morning. I think it's the costumes... we all know I lurve a good costume party...  but I also think it's the excuse to continue living out (your most adored) part of childhood, much like Christmas is. This year will be our 4th annual costume party - my friends are such good sports! I'm already finding it difficult to make the invites different than previous years. Last year I went all out but too late in the season and the invites I discovered (too late) were too large to send in the regular post. This year I kept it simple. Last year's My Mind's Eye stamps, this year's American Crafts Halloween line (clouds) and some printed craft paper (including Beetle Juice inspired stripes). The clouds are really a sleeve that slips up to reveal the details of our shin-dig. I've used this so many times but I'm too busy to judge myself right not. The dorky stamps make it all better :)

Save the date!

I've had the pleasure of working with a good friend Leslie (and soon-to-be-husband Rich) on her wedding invitations, save the dates, etc. She is so organized and thorough; she knows exactly what she wants. Delightful! And because she lives in Toronto, this is a great help to me. So far we have come up with this most adorable save the date. Leslie will be printing these as actual postcards using a service offered by Staples.We may need to tweek some things but I liked them so much I just had to share. I cannot claim that I designed these ('cause I found a similar image online) but I did make them happen and we did make them "our own". The invitations are did create but they are still in the works. I love graphic design on the computer. I wish I could do this on the side but where would I find the time? Only for great friends for now ;)

Halloween Invites

Well I don't have as much time to catch up as I would like. (I actually have zero minutes, but I'm desperate to blog again.) I am slowly drowning in both my personal and professional life but here is neither the time nor the place to vent my woes. Instead I leave you with my version of Martha's invites for our third annual Halloween costume party. If you have not received yours yet, it's because they will not send these little packages as letters and I have been hand delivering them... or you are just not invited :P I'll hopefully be back soon again! I miss this!

Martha's uber cute but far to fancy (and I'm far too thrifty) design. My much grosser, but, I think, equally enjoyable version.

Branding Myself

Do not fear.

I am not partaking in this...

... because it scares me. What? It does. Not much into the altering my body permanently. I'm too fickle for that.

What this blog is actually about is creating a logo for you! When we started planning our wedding I was really into the idea of coming up with a "logo" for us. I wanted to put it on everything. The problem with that of course is that it is A) pretentious and B) expensive!!! I had many grand schemes but I was really hung up on this. I love seeing weddings that are all coordinated loveliness. Of course I love the vintage or shabby chic weddings that are totally not matchy-matchy but again - the molla decides the type of wedding you can have. If I had a fabulous planner like Juli then maybe I could pull that off. But alas, I could afford no planner. (O. M. G. is Juli doing beautiful things lately!) So, I created our brand. I put it on our wedding envelopes, our Jamaica favours and welcome letters, our table cards, our thank yous, you get the idea. It really made a difference, to me anyway, to have this common denominator on all of the things we gave our guests. It looked super professional in my opinion and the best part was that I did it in "Paint". Yep. That cheesy program that comes with your Microsoft software. That one. No expensive Photoshop here people - just K and D brand thank you cards and envelopes. Seriously, the simple things in life really make the most difference to me. I'm a details person. What you can't see in these photos is that our logo for our destination wedding was our initials with two palm leaves in the background. Our thank yous are creamy and taupy and the taupy palm leaves didn't show up too well here. But trust me, if my camera hadn't died, you would have seen the beauty. That's another thing that I love about branding yourself. I used different colors on the invites, welcome letters and now thank yous but they all look similar.

P.S. The thank you cards themselves came from Costco. You get approximately 1 million for less than $40.00. Sweet deal!

My Favorite Holiday!!!

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Well, okay. Christmas is up there too. But I have always had so much fun during Halloween (with the exclusion of last year - Halloween fell right in the middle of my advanced practicum - no tricks or treats for me that year). I love the decorations, I love the costumes, I LOVE the chocolate. Now that we are in our house we will (hopefully) have some little trick or treaters. We are going to be that "good" house that gives the full chocolate bars as I am sooo in the festive spirit. AND I will have my own fun as I am hosting a costume party on Nov. 1st. This allows all my friends with little ones to do their parental duties on the 31st and ship their darling off to Grandma's while they party the following day. Chantel and I made these simple but wicked Halloween invitations. The best part is that no two invites are the same. I can't wait to send them!!!!!!!!