Bridal Fair!

I'm very excited about this! I will be co-hosting a bridal fair with a good friend Lisa with BV Weddings. Click on the image for more details. I'll post more information once we finalize the vendors. There will be all sorts of fun ideas, tablescapes, favor ideas, escort card displays and the BEST thing of all?! A gocco demonstration is planned. So stay tuned!!

A Christmas Gift

Back in October, I read about Karl with Cut Arts from BV Weddings Blog. My initial thought was,"How fricken cool - I want to hire this guy - how can I convince my husband to get married again?!" But then reality kicked in - I have already tortured this poor man with my "we could have done this or that" bit with the wedding AND usually when I bring up the wedding in this way the conversation of how we went "over budget" is also thrown into the mix. I am immediately put in my place and decide that my wedding was wonderful just the way it happened. But I digress...

So when I read about Karl from cut arts - I bookmarked his page and decided it would make a cool gift. I love his work and really appreciated this somewhat "lost" form of art. Fast forward to the holidays. I was scouring my brain to try and think of a cool present for my in-laws and came up with nothing. Then it finally occurred to me to contact Karl and see what sort of gift I can put together for Ed & Trudy (aka the in-laws). So I sent some pictures to Karl and to see what he could.

This is the picture I sent. I found it on my husband's computer and loved it.

So Karl gave me a quote (I won't say since Ed & Trudy are known to visit this blog) but if you want to know the cost just shoot me an email. About 4 weeks later I had one of the BEST Christmas gifts to give. I bought the frames and matting from Aaron Brothers and it was ready to go. It looks exactly like them - it's amazing!


I loved it so much - I hired Karl to do another one for my husband! Here are the pictures I sent...

I wanted him to cut a landscape and silhouette

He asked for some more pictures that showed more details of Ben.
Like how he stands and a close-up of his profile.

This was the best profile picture I found of Ben.
Please ignore the 5 chins I have in this picture.

Karl was great to work with - he called me to make sure we were on the same page and even made some suggestions on how he could make the picture better. He checked to so see if it was okay and answered all of my questions and concerns.

So the final product...


I love that the gift is so personal. I think this would be a GREAT gift for anyone - who wouldn't like a cool portrait of themselves?!

Holiday Gocco

Happy New Years! My last post of the year and it also happens to be my 60th post. Wow!! Who knew that I would have so much to share?! What better way to wrap up the year than with my new favorite toy - the gocco!! After my first attempt with my friend Nicole last month, I decided to give it another go with some holiday cards. They didn't come out exactly the way I wanted but they turned out okay. Lessons were learned and I'm already brewing up my next day of gocco fun.

I bought a PG-11. This has a larger print window compared to the PG-5 or PG-6. The PG-11 also has some paper registration that helps with alignment and placement. I also read that the PG-11 makes printing 2 colors (when layering is involved) a bit easier.

Here is the first card I decided to make. I got the vector illustration from istockphoto.com and played around with it.

Again - I am obsessed with printing white on color paper.
I also hand mixed the green color so it would compliment the purple better.

This is how I mixed the ink colors. I would not recommend this. It was a pain.
I was too lazy to go buy the ink.

I had some green ink left over - and of course I didn't want to waste it so
I decided to make another set.

Print Master - stamp from Impress Rubber Stamps

Do you see the white splotches?! That was because my carbon copy had too much carbon and burned to the screen. The paper gets stuck on the screen and then the ink can't get through. I tried to scrape it but that didn't work. Oh well. They still turned out pretty cute.


For kicks I decided to print it on the purple to see
what the ink colors would look like. Ummm...not so good.



I wrote a little ditty about our year and then folded it. The fold is called a Turk Map. I have a file of how to do it. Drop me an email and I can email it to you!

Happy New Year's and cheers to another year of flowers, crafts and fun!

Happy Birthday To Me!

It was my birthday last weekend and we threw a Holiday/Birthday party for friends and family. Our theme was Naughty or Nice and the night consisted of ways to figure out whether one made Santa's "good list" this year.

One the highlights of the evening...CAKE! This cake was delicious!
It was from Miette Bakery located in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
This was called a Tomboy cake with buttercream frosting. YUMMY.

My husband surprised me with Personalized Cocktail Napkins!
He was very proud of the fonts he picked.

My friend Caroline made cupcakes. I stuck little halos on them for the "nice" ones.

Some of my nice friends (and one naughty)

One of our signature drinks was the Savage Car Bomb.

Boy, did I pay for this. It was a fun night though!

I Faked My Shoes

One the biggest challenges I had for my wedding was finding shoes! My ceremony was on grass so anything with a sharp heel was out. I'm not a big fan of wedges and I really wanted to be comfortable. My plan was to never stop dancing and my shoes needed to help me achieve this. After a lot of research I gave up and bought some cute flip flops at Macy's. My mother did not approve (to say the least). To please her I bought another pair of shoes (not intending to wear them....ever.)

I have to say though, the shoes photograph well.

This is what I actually wore all day!

And of course after I got married - I realized that my shoes didn't need to be white and that funky and fun shoe were actually cool.


Oh well.

Lisa & Paul

Lisa and Paul got married on a beatiful day in October. The sun was out and it couldn't have been a better day. Their colors were red, black and white! Lisa has some wonderful images of the wedding from their very talented photographer Ed Pingol!

Bridesmaid Bouquets with their initial pins

Flower Girl Head Wreath