Danwich!

Just a few photos from this last week when some friends/fam bam went out to get Boiling Crab. They opened up a new one in Costa Mesa! (Oh, and an old friend of mine, Stevie, drove out from Arizona to visit.) Of course, we HAD to take her to the best seafood joint in town!

LADIES NIGHT!!!!! We grabbed dinner at Tommy Bahama's in Laguna Beach and then headed out for what was supposed to be  'a night out in the town'. We left home around 6:45 PM and got back home by 9:45 PM. PARTY ANIMALS, ya know? Hahahaha

My awesome girlfriend, Stevie, (on the left) who drove out from Arizona to visit, and a guest appearance by the wonderful Vickster also known as Vicki also known as Victoria. ;) 

A DANWICH with my beautiful sister, Debs, and me! :) 

Hope all of you have a wonderful, and most importantly SAFE Labor Day weekend! 

Engagement Photoshoot

SO...our engagement photoshoot is coming up this next Tuesday, and I've been scanning all over the internet for bright ideas on how to go about looking fantasmical in our photos. Here are some I came across for the type of "style" we're going for:

We're super thrilled we get to use the venue that we've chosen for our wedding as the actual engagement site since the owners said a lot of photographers die to get the chance to shoot there! I've been collecting (physically and mentally) prop ideas as well to have with us to use, and I'm just hoping the weather isn't sweltering---or at least by the time we shoot. (We're doing later afternoon.) 

Wedding invitations have finally been completed, and Daniel's mom has been so awesome with helping us plan our engagement party! In fact, I feel so blessed to have so many family members ever so willing to help look into different options for us for the many parts of the wedding planning process. (From the rehearsal, number of parties---engagement, bachelorette, etc etc---) Our day can't come soon enough! :)  

Diet Shmiet & Tag Grief

So, Daniel and I have been on a sorta detox/diet since returning from Tahoe. I've been eating steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and veggies for dinner. (Gotta get in shape for our engagement photos, know what I mean!) Surprisingly, it's been rather doable except I feel like we'd probably run out of ideas soon---you can only cook vegetables SO many ways. (And scratch salads! Who eats those anyway?!?!) ;) Really, though. If anyone has any great recipes on how to cook up veggies or even healthy meal options---message them my way!

As for our invitations, I finally got a hold of a giant paper cutter last night at FedEx. Daniel went with me and helped slice hundreds of sheets of paper. (Weirdest thing...I've NEVER been to Kinko's before until the other day!! I didn't even know they had a self service area where you can use all their machines and cutting boards!!) GREATEST. FIND. EVER. (For me, at least.)

My hand's still sore from 'doily' punching so many tags! The project started out with these 2" x 4" manilla tags from Staples. (They only came in boxes of 500, oy! Fortunately for me...I messed up one whole batch, so I'm glad I had a ton to spare.)

I took my Martha Stewart hole puncher thingy ma' bobs that I purchased at Michael's for about $25 and hole punched the crap out of them...all 170 of them!!! (Which explains my ridiculously sore right hand. Ick.)

I wanted a rustic feel to my invitations to match the theme of our outdoor wedding, so I had to find a way to distress the tags a bit. First, I tried using a giant pot of black tea soaked with 3 Tazo tea bags which gave it a darker tint to the tags, but I realized something in the tea was making the tags super 'spotty' looking. (No bueno.) Next, I tried using a cup of Nespresso coffee which I found gave the tags a rather even, but most importantly SMOOTH texture to them. I set my oven to 350 degrees and  lined up all the tags on the sheet...line by line...tag by tag, and baked for 5-6 minutes until they were dry:

Cute, no? The tags still had a leftover scent of coffee, so I put them all in a shoebox with 3 pouches of lavender potpourri which instantly cleaned up the smell! I spent the next hour stamping all of these puppies with the personalized RSVP stamp I purchased off of rubberstamp.com.

I woke up this morning and my WHOLE body was sore. I'm going to go ahead and say it was all the work I put in yesterday making these RSVP cards. Do I regret it? Not one bit. It was totally worth every dime!!! Until next time, au revoir!