Beautiful World: Ice Cream Parasol

TGIF, amIright?  Even my ice cream needs to kick back and relax.  Except that I ate it.  Sad ice cream.  Happy me though!

          

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Beautiful World: Valentine's Presents

This picture has two beautiful things in it:  First, finally enough sunlight in my apartment after I get home from work to take a picture.  And second, the Valentine's Day presents my parents mailed to me and M.  My parents have always given me Valentine's presents (November baby and such), but I didn't expect them to give M one too.  How nice!

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A String of Pearls: Shower Invitations

One of my best friends from high school is getting married in March and her three Texas bridesmaids are throwing her a bridal shower in our good ole' hometown.  Even though none of us lives there anymore, lol.  Because I am stuck in L.A., unable to actually make it to the shower, I volunteered to do the invitations:

The scanner bleached the color of these invitations. Also, the various lighting conditions under which I took pictures of the invitations caused wild color variations to appear throughout the post. Sorry for this.

JJ's wedding colors are Tiffany blue and white, and we decided to use her wedding colors for the shower as well so it would feel in theme with her suite of bridal events.  But, just to be different, we added pops of red and pink throughout; this works especially well since the shower will be two days before Valentine's day.  And because pink is pretty.  And romantic.  Like us.

JJ's personal style trends toward retro elegance- think Jackie O. and Audrey Hepburn. She prefers cocktail length dresses and often wears a string of pearls. Once she gave me Amy Vanderbilt's book of etiquitte from 1955, and we sat around reading it.  Don't give me that look- it was both hilarious and informative.  That's the kind of people we are.  Because she is that type of person (awesome), she requested a shower that felt like a tea-party.  Tres chic!  Because of this I decided to go with a pearl motif on her shower's invitations.  I like to think that they reflect the bride's style.

These are the supplies I used to make the invitations:

Michael's "Recollections" invitation sets, flowers punched using Martha Stewart "hydrangea" punch and card- stock in pink, shiny heart stickers, a small paint brush, glue, a mechanical pencil, and acrylic paint in white and champagne metallic . 

Luckily for me, Michael's carries sets of invitatons and matching envelopes- some in fold-able card form, and some in single pieces (ironically called "cards") of cardstock - in a color that's close to the elusive Tiffany's-robin'segg-mermaid bluegreentealturquoise of J's wedding.  I went to dafont.com to download (for free) a font that looked like it would be appropriate for a vintage retro tea-party.  Next, I formatted the invite on MS Word, changed the quality settings on M's printer to get the darkest black available, and then printed them out:  Easy peasy!   

To make the strings of pearls I used acrylic paint in white and champagne metallic- equal parts each- and then the eraser of an unused mechanical pencil as a stamp.  On the back, to emphasize the different salient points, I stamped three extra "pearls".  This was my favorite part of this project.  The eraser on the pencil even happened to curve a little in the middle, creating the effect of roundness to the pearls. 

Earlier in the year I bought a Martha Stewart craft punch- "hydrangea"- just because I wanted one; thanks to the invitations, I finally got to justify use it!  I punched out two pink flowers per invitation.  I can now report that it is the easiest craft punch I've ever used; it also imparts joy!  Still waiting on the riches.

I glued the flowers to the invitations to fill empty spaces I'd left in the wording, and painted designs or "seeds" in the center of each flower.

This is was a project that required a lot of time to sit around waiting for things to dry:

Finally, I used heart stickers to help secure the invitation, and King and Queen of Hearts stamps to pay for the postage. I like the outside of invitations to be pretty too.  That way people know they just received something special.  Yay for love and mail! 

See what I mean about color variation?  The lighting in my apartment at night is very yellow, which bleaches my photos.
 

Random rant fun fact:  You know how invitations ask you to RSVP?  RSVP is an abbreviation for "répondez, s'il vous plaît"- which basically means- please reply- but in French.  Because the French invented etiquette.  Or were better at it.  Or something. 

Anyway.  When you receive an invitation that asks you to RSVP you should respond, according to Amy Vanderbilt, within three or four days, whether you will be attending or not.(1)  This is in contrast to the informal- "Regrets Only" also used on invitations- which assumes you will attend unless you say otherwise.  It's never cool (or correct) to use no response as a way of saying no.  Because then whoever invited you will be afraid that you will show up at the last minute and- being unaccounted for- have no chair or food.  Which would be sad.  A travesty really.  Even though you deserve it for not RSVPing. 

If you were like that.  Which none of you are.  Thank Goodness!   

1. Dunnan, Nancy; Vanderbilt, Amy; Tuckerman, Nancy.  The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette, 50th Anniversary Edition.  Random House, Inc., 1995. p. 208.

Beautiful World: Cheeky Lobster

These are crummy pictures.  But you know what was not crummy?  My handmade lobster ravioli with zucchini in a saffron creme sauce from Spumoni.  THAT was AWESOME:

Don't you agree that this piece of lobster is being cheeky? It wanted me to eat it.  And eat it I did!

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Beautiful World: Pretty Supplies

 

 These are the supplies I've been using lately- all spread out over the kitchen table.

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Beautiful World: Little Cowboy

This is my grandfather dressed up like a cowboy as a kid.  Do you like his chaps?  I think they are pretty swell.

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Weekend with Tommy

This is my friend Tommy: 

Tommy is making a strange face because I was camera-stalking him, but he's actually very nice.

He studies brains! in San Diego, and brews cider himself. Both of which make him very cool. He is also very good at explaining science.  Tommy tells really absurd stories with a deadpan delivery that lets the ridiculousness of whatever he is telling you unfold slowly and therefore be even more hilarious.

We took him to the Santa Monica Pier (like we take everyone), except this time we walked underneath it, which I found really creepy!  The Pier has amusement park rides on it, so the whole thing moans and shakes when the roller coaster rattles through its course. 

This time I was very brave and walked down to the waves and we stuck our little feet in.  The water of the Pacific Ocean currents down from Canada, so it's aways cold.  You'd think everything would be cold because it's January, but on this particular day, it was about 75 by the beach. 

Malcolm was rocking his flannel-lined jeans.  It was extremely stylin':

There were like a million sailboats out on the Pacific on this particular beautiful Saturday:

There were crowds of people and bright colors everywhere, and generally it was a lot of fun.  The day was one of those very casual days where it didn't feel like we were trying hard to come up with things to say to each other.  The conversation flowed casually. 

There was more to the day as well.  Afterwards we went to eat sushi (Tommy hadn't had any since he moved to California!)  Then we had Joel over and sipped beer and ale till the early hours of the morning.  We just conversed comfortably throughout.  It was all extremely pleasant, good friends make the world better!