Banded Together

My wedding band is finished and I wanted to share it with you all. I absolutely can't wait to wear it everyday.



This is the ring before . It was a ring my parents gave to me as a purity ring when I was a teenager. It wasn't really my style anymore but I wanted to turn in into something I would have forever.



(look at the beautiful packaging it came in, a little wooden box with a glass lid!)

I found Bario Neal a few months ago and decided to have them make my wedding band. They used the four diamonds from my original ring and recycled the gold for me.



They did an absolutely fabulous job and I am so deeply in love with it. It is perfect for me and I am so happy that it is something no one else will have and that the diamonds are so personal to me. Bario Neal uses all recycled metals and ethically mined gems and they donate some of their profit to charity (and are super reasonably priced to begin with).



They even have my ring on their website under custom work right here.

Cordially Invited

I know I haven't blogged in almost 2 months but lets just pretend that never happened. I promise to get back into the routine. New year, new camera, new events.

From the beginning we knew that we wanted to do all of our save the dates and invites ourselves. This turned out to be a lot of stress but totally worth it. The save the dates weren't that difficult but the invitations turned out to be quite the project.

I gocco'd the reply cards first and they were simple and painless and turned out perfect.



Then came the invitations themselves. Now the problem that I ran into was completely my own fault. I made the image just a tad larger than is recommended and realized that the size limit is there for a reason. I had to jimmy-rig my gocco with cardboard siding to allow for a larger surface area to print onto. It was quite the nightmare for a couple hours but it all worked out and we were able to print exactly the number we needed.



I did take the design from another source but I did hand draw it myself. The fonts were free from dafont. All gocco'd in a row!



I would have loved to have all of the addresses hand calligraphed but in the end it is way out of our budget and most people toss em in the trash anyway. So I just went with labels from Paper Source and they made me just as happy.


(more on the Obama's invitation later)

Long Beach Aquarium

A few weeks ago, Steve and I took a trip to the aquarium. I had been begging him to take me for the longest time so I finally just took charge and bought the tickets myself. At Orange Coast College you can buy tickets for a discount if you are a student so that's just what I did.



One of the best things about the Long Beach aquarium are the jellyfish. They are so extremely interesting to watch. They look so gentle and graceful, you would never think they could kill you with one touch.



The day was a little lackluster, as amazing as it is to see all of the wonderful creatures, it just isn't as exciting as I remember from when I was a kid.



This guy was huge, much bigger than he looks in the picture, and he came right up to us and stared. My favorite part about the whole day had to be the manta rays. I told Steve that if there was a place that I could pay $2 to touch manta rays I would go all the time. I was too busy playing to take any pictures of them but I did get a picture of this little guy.



All in all, it was definitely worth it to do something different from the weekly routine. Support a local establishment and spend some time with my guy. I recommend it if only for the rays and jellyfish.

Ring Bowl

Paloma's Nest has been making it's rounds on the wedding blogs for awhile now so I decided to jump on the wagon and acquire one of their custom ring bowls for us.



Paloma's Nest studio is powered by 100% renewable wind energy and uses recycled materials whenever possible. The packaging was almost as nice as the product itself! We aren't having a wedding party let alone a ring bearer so our officiant, Kelsey, will just have carry it in his pocket.



Not only will this be a wonderful keepsake from our wedding day but we can use it as an ornament afterward. Steve and I have a little tradition of buying/making/getting ornaments as vacation keepsakes and significant events or things in our lives. And I can't think of anything more significant in our lives up to this point than our wedding.



I can't wait to marry such a wonderful, loving, caring, intelligent, and funny man. He really is my other half and I am so much more complete with him.

little pumpkin

Holidays are my favorite time of year. Not only because of the parties and family and delicious food but I love decorating my home for the holidays. In past years, Christmas always gets the most attention but this year I wanted to add some new things to the fall decor.



I had an idea and didn't know how well I could execute it but I was going to try. It didn't turn out as well as I'd like and I rushed it a little so the stitching isn't perfect but I think it is a wonderful addition to the mantle until December rolls around.

correspondance

I have always had a love of all things paper, especially cards. There are so many wonderful companies, big and small, making cards and if I had a letterpress I would love to be one of them. For me, working on a smaller scale at my kitchen table making cards for friends and loved ones is more than good enough. Recently I have been using scrap paper and origami sheets to make shapes and then using a glue stick to adhere them to blanks I have gotten from Michael's. Here is a last minute card made for my friends' wedding. I would use rubber stamps for everything if it wasn't so tedious.



Once again the theme of making something yourself which you could easily buy comes up. A beautiful screenprinted or letterpressed card can cost you upwards of $3 but a pack of 12 blank cards and envelopes cost about $5 with the paper either being free from your scrap pile or a couple bucks for a pack of origami paper.





I also have a stack of creme postcards from Papersource that we used for our Christmas Cards last year that I have been slowly going through. Here, I whipped up a little Halloween card to send out with a gift. When it comes down to it, not only am I saving money but I am being creative and making things for people that I love. I know that I love receiving handmade goods so I might as well give them too.

pita

I was reading a post on The Tangled Nest about making your own pita. It turns out the recipe she uses is from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison which is a book I have acquired through Steve. It is chock full of fabulous recipes and is also a great reference for different vegetable cooking techniques. Looking over the recipe I realized how easy it was to make. I swear I will never buy pita again.



The recipe makes ten fairly large pitas but you could easily break that number down into smaller portions. Since the are not baked in the oven (which they can be) they aren't puffed and therefore not able to be filled. I did these in the cast iron which makes them more along the lines of flat bread. Plus they only take 30 seconds on each side.



Next time I will roll them a little thinner. They were a little too bready for the dinner we had planned with them. Hummus, olives, tomatoes, and chive yogurt dip. I can't wait to make more.



There is something about not only growing your food but making things fresh with your own hands that you could easily buy from the grocery store. We took a couple over to my parents and it is so much more satisfying to give and eat what you made than what you bought. They were so fresh tasting and tasted just as good the next day heated over a flame. Delicious.

simple

I am always on the lookout for cute gifts, things to have on hand when you need that little something. Awhile back I was shopping and happened upon Keel's Simple Diary at American Rag's Maison-Midi.



They came in all the right colors, have a wonderful leathery feel, and the best pages. Aside from this blog I do not keep a journal. I have tried at many points in my life but came to realize it's just not for me. But then this pops up and it's like it was made for me. Little detailed questions, boxes to check off, and a quirky sense of nonsense that makes me want to fill up all the pages.



I quickly snapped up the yellow one for myself and the brown one for a very special friend in mind. I knew she would be just the one to appreciate something like this. I definitely need to go stock up on a few other colors for the time when I need just the right gift.

(images via Nordtrom)

japanese goods

One of my favorite things to do when I am bored (who am I kidding, I cancel errands) is to go to one of three Japanese markets in my area and shop around. I mostly hit the non-food areas of the store for little gems. My favorite finds are always the different paper goods and pens and clips. An office supply lovers dream!

I absolutely love making lists. I make them for everything and anything; groceries, projects, things to blog about, to-do's. I also love little notebooks, I have about a thousand. If you can't think of anything to get me, buy me a cute little notepad, and when I saw this one it was like two wonderful things colliding to bring me joy!



I've already used it to make two lists! Also, I saw these on the lovely blog of Miss Jordan Ferney awhile back and just about died at how cute they were.



I couldn't really justify buying them at the time seeing as 1. I didn't need them and 2. paying for shipping (for paperclips I might add) but once I saw them in person, the next thing I know I am being handed my change and I am walking out the door with them in my purse.



Even though my first reason for not buying them hasn't changed, I will find some papers that need clipping together. And if I don't, they make for cute storytelling.

band camp

I know I have been a bad blogger.



I am trying to take care of some little things for the wedding that can be done now and one of those is getting my wedding band made. I found one online and fell in love with it but then remembered that my parents gave me a ring when I was 16 that has four small diamonds in it that I never wear. Bario Neal was featured on Snippet & Ink and I was just enamored with their rings. Once I saw that they do custom work I emailed them right away with a picture of the original ring I loved and they said they could easily make it with the diamonds I have. It is going to be much cheaper and better for the environment. Bario Neal uses only recycled gold and they donate 1% to charity.





I am so excited to get my wedding band and show it to you all. We haven't looked for Steve's band yet but he wants something simple and silver so that shouldn't be too hard, right?

(images Bario Neal , Melissa Joy Manning , and Yoon Jungyun)

cute card

Last weekend, we were lucky to enjoy two of our lovely friends getting married. Since we were going to be in the San Luis Obispo area (the wedding was in Parkfield ) and that is where are wonderful photographer Jeff Newsom is from, we decided to do our engagement photos while we were up there. I am so excited to see how they turn out!

As much as I love all the wonderful letterpressed cards out there, I have been dying for an opportunity to make this lovely card from Lovely Morning.



Also on our way to Parkfield, there were these adorable baby cows right on the side of the road. I hope their cuteness brightens your day!

save the dates

Now that everyone has (hopefully) received theirs, I can finally post about our save the dates! This was my first time ever using my Gocco and it was definitely a challenging experience. There are a lot of "learn-as-you-go" aspects to the process but I was happy to learn along the way. I originally was only going to use two screens for the postcards but by taping on the screen to prevent ink bleeding, I ruined another part of it so I ended up using three for this project.

We are getting married in Palm Springs and we wanted to bring that into play with the save the dates but also wanted them to be fairly simple. I hand drew the cacti, banner and "save the date". The rest was done on the computer, printed, and gocco'd. There are two layers to the cacti that had to be printed separately and since we wanted them to have a handmade feel, I didn't worry too much about the imperfections.



The second round was the banner. I definitely could have done the font on the front during this printing as well but with trying to get all of the elements on only 2 screens, I kind of screwed up in the process. This was one of those learning moments that I hope I don't have to learn again.



Here is a close up of the postcard before the writing and with the second layer of the cactus printed.



Lastly, the finished product. The fonts I used are Air Conditioner (found here )and Modern No. 20



I honestly think that the back turned out to be my favorite. I am not super computer savvy so I typed out my own calendar and ended up using a red pen to draw a heart around our date on each card. The labels are from Paper Source and addresses were printed on. The finishing touch is the adorable King and Queen stamps that everyone loves. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

long time coming

I've finally gotten my camera back so I can finally post about Steve's birthday! I'll start off with his gift. Steve is really hard to buy gifts for. I am pretty good at buying him clothes but other than that, I am usually at a loss. Since this was his big thirtieth I wanted to make sure it was something special. I thought of a few things we had talked about getting or him wanting and decided I would let him choose which of the three he wanted. Now my only problem was figuring out a way to wrap these momentary intangible things. First, I took apart an envelope I had and traced the shape onto three different pieces of scrapbook paper and cut them out. Using my bone folder I folded the four sides so they would close up nicely.



I had some old card stock lying around from our Christmas postcards so I drew each gift option (3 fruit trees, a kindle, a home brew kit), carved it out, and glued a piece of origami paper to the back. These were then glued to the envelopes.



They were all closed up, each tied with a ribbon...



...and bundled together with these wonderful paperclips. (he chose the home brew kit, by the way)



The second little gift I made for him was a birthday button. I had seen this birthday boy badge on a blog somewhere (I'm sorry I don't remember which one!!) and thought to myself "I can make something similar." So I did. Steve bought me a little wood burning kit for Christmas and this was the first time it was put to use. ($20 at Michael's) It definitely took a lot of practice. For the writing I simply printed the text on paper, colored the back with pencil, laid it on top of the wood circle and traced the text. It transferred to the wood so I could easily burn it. You could use carbon paper if you have some but this works if you don't.



I had some scrap felt lying around, so I cut them into little petals and laid them out in a pattern I liked. I hot glued around the edge of the petals and stuck the circle on top. I also glued a piece of felt on the back to secure it all and finished it off with a pin.



It was so great to see Steve wear this all day, all around LA. He was such a good sport. His birthday party was a success with homemade tacos, delicious treats, ladder golf, and an outdoor screening of The Big Lebowski complete with horchata White Russians. The absolute BEST part of the whole birthday celebration was a custom pinata we had made of Steve's head. It was so great to see everyone's reaction and to watch the real Steve knock down pinata Steve.

vacation home eggplant

Our good friends hosted Steve's birthday bash at their lovely home two weekends ago and they have an absolutely amazing garden that I would kill for. It's a hundred times larger and better than ours. Every time we go up there (which is often and now considered our "vacation home") we reap the benefits. Whether it be fresh tomatoes eaten off the vine or being sent home with a bag of beautiful japanese eggplant. These are the same variety that we had grown but I think we left ours on the vine a little too long. Rachel had mentioned that she sliced her's thin and used them in a lasagna instead of the noodles. It sounded so delicious that I had to try it myself.



I sliced the eggplant on my mandoline and used some leftover marinara from Trader Joe's. For the filling I sauteed some spinach and mixed together some ricotta with salt, pepper, chili powder and nutmeg; sprinkled some Parmesan throughout and baked it for 40 minutes. It was so good. It didn't have the structure to it the way lasagna does so I would say it is more of an eggplant bake than anything.



We have been eating the leftovers for days.