I, scavenger

photo credit

I've been outside a lot lately. And I've learned many things -- firstly, that I'm better at applying sunscreen than bug spray. Secondly, that the jury's still out regarding my ability to keep outdoorsy-plants amongst the living.

Allow me to explain: I have a unique ability to kill houseplants. It's extreme -- so much so, that I've used it as an excuse when people ask me why I don't have children. It's a talent that I believe I inherited from my mom (and in direct contrast to both of our talents when it comes to furry, four-legged types, I hasten to add.) I know that as I child I saw her dehydrate a cactus, and she may have supervised the expiration of a silk plant or two. And I am definitely her daughter when it comes to matters botanical. If ficuses had post offices, my picture would be on posters there.

But: I've heard that these things are easier out-of-doors. Or "easier", at any rate. As one might expect, I'm a bit hesitant to dive right into an expensive landscaping scheme before I properly evaluate my own planticidal tendencies ... which has led me to the greatest source of free-except-for-the-hassle-factor greenery on the planet: Craigslist.

The upside: we won't be out more than gas money if stuff dies. (Okay, fine: "if".) The downside: my strategy is at the mercy of what's being offered, an how well eHow.com advises me on not killing it. So we're sort of building ourselves the Garden of Misfit Toys. But I believe in my little freak plants. Even the ones that insist on looking a bit like they need some caffeine & a plant brassiere (you know -- for the drooping).

Pictures tomorrow -- it was too dark tonight, by the time I'd finished today's transplant. Dr. Frankenstein has nothing on my yard.

the great outdoors

When last we chatted, the yard was looking like this:Better than weed-a-palooza, perhaps, but still leaving "a bit" to be desired. Enter the heavy machinery!!
For the record: yes, the nice men at Home Depot will laugh at you, the scrawny blonde chick, as they help you load the giant roto-tiller into your Beetle. And yes, you "may" need to call the Mr. at work when you get it home & realize that you cannot get it out of your car unassisted. And it's definitely a bad idea to use your body weight to steer it, since it weighs considerably more than you do, especially when your job requires you to wear shorts most of the time and you have to explain repeatedly that "No, nobody is beating me."

BUT: once you take all of that into consideration, you have yourself a fun and noisy (Zöe was not pleased) way to make sure those weeds don't come back!
Why is it that when most people picture "woman gardening" in their heads, it involves someone genteel in a sun hat amongst lots of flowers, but when I try it, it involves heavy machinery that could maim a person? Also, why do my arms look like they belong on a dude in this picture? WTF?!?

Ahem. Moving along. So: after 2 days of tilling, during which both the Mr. & I pretty much exhausted ourselves in an effort to avoid paying another day's rental fee, we had clean tilled dirt. And my daily scouring of Craigslist began to pay off.
Thanks to D. in Hacienda Heights, who wanted his river rocks gone so he could plant some grass. (Free, folks -- my favorite price!)

And thanks to S. in Reseda, who's re-doing her backyard & wanted her Heavenly Bamboo gone. Bonus: it's not actually bamboo, which means it won't attack the foundation & sidewalk. Also: another freebie (plus a little manual labor to dig them out of the ground.)

That's the reverse angle.

And since I tend to get overly excited about things, I figured I may as well build some raised garden beds, where we can plant things that smell good and may even turn out to be edible:
I found the instructions online -- they're upside down here, waiting for me to dig holes for the corner pegs. And yes, the nice men at Home Depot will laugh at you as you cram a few 10'-long boards into your Beetle. Why does everyone keep mistaking me for a damsel in distress, I wonder? Not only am I not distressed (at the moment, anyway), but I'm pretty sure I don't even qualify as a damsel ....

Oh, and just because we're so effing proud of ourselves: We seem to have finished the kitchen!
Well, except for the stove & a table. But those can wait until we get our tax refund ... unless I find 'em for free on Craigslist.

la cucina

Ah, what a difference 2 days & a great big heap of OCD* make. To wit:

We seem to have a kitchen.

I can't believe how much bigger the room looks since we took down the cabinets that flanked the window. (And thanks to my friend M who suggested we put them in the garage, where we can still use them. Brilliant!) Also, it was totally worth the effort & caustic chemicals involved in getting rid of the "oak" veneer ... or as the Mr. has dubbed it, "fauk". Now all we need to do is hang the shelves above the window-adjacent counter. And buy a stove.

I feel obligated to show the reverse angle, for some perverse reason. Or maybe just to reassure myself that there's a whole lot of Project remaining.
Behold: left) the aforementioned shelves, and right) Future Site of Our Kitchen Table.

*I "may" have alphabetized the spice drawer. No, you can't see a picture.**

**Okay, fine:
(for some reason Blogger won't rotate the picture -- oh well.)

repurposing v1.0

Behold, the 1st in a possibly-many-parted series:

Some of it, we're selling on Craigslist/Bravo Bride/ etc. And the rest of it, well ...

A) at the wedding:


B) after the wedding:


Just doing my part to keep the planet green.

ch-ch-ch-ch- changes!

Finally! a few images of what's been up with Isabelle. (Yes, that's the house's name.)

First:
In the Living Room: out with the vomit-tan, in with the greige (dammit! I miss Domino) and blue ceiling detail. Drapery to replace awful vertical blinds = a work in progress.

In the kitchen, we've secretly replaced the "oak" cabinets with these:
Let's see if she notices! But seriously ... the Mr. just finished stripping the icky varnish off the doors, so the next steps are: sand, paint, & re-attach those.

And in the hallway, just a few adjusted hinges away from completion:
Our built-ins! Here's the doors that are awaiting their pretty satin nickel hinges:
Aren't they pretty, with their non-paint-encrusted hardware? I know!!

Oh, and referring back to this entry's title ... and just because her name rhymes with Bowie:
It's Zöe**!! Wearing the shirt we got her for her birthday. (She's the most fashion-y fashionista I currently know. Girl changed her outfit 4 times that night!)

{** NOT OUR DOG!! That's my friend Bayleigh's dog. Stop congratulating us -- we just bought her a damn t-shirt!!!}

More pics on the way -- the contractor is coming!1!!

on being distracted

Number of dishes in the sink: lots.

Number of days I've been wearing my husband's socks: 2

Number of days I've not made the bed, thinking that would make me change the sheets, only to exhaustedly fall asleep in the wrinkly, dirty ones: 4

Number of days since I washed my hair: ain't telling.

Laundry situation: He's out of underwear, and I've been getting dressed out of the basket full of clean laundry for a week, rather than putting it away -- which is why I haven't done another load (I need that basket to carry it to the laundry room).

BUT: the house is starting to look like somewhere I'd want to live. In reality, as opposed to that theoretical "as soon as about 50 things change" sort of way.

Pictures soon. But right now I have to go back to getting paint in my cuticles.

my new best friend

Yes, thing are going swimmingly at the Un-Casa. (That name sucks. I'll work on a better one. But meanwhile ...) The locks have been changed, the interior doors have shiny new doorknobs, and the paint samples from Ralph Lauren arrived today & were promptly smeared on the relevant walls. I'm not sure in which parallel universe one pays for 2-day express shipping on December 29th and receives said order on January 4th, but I plan to take that up with the dear people at RL first thing tomorrow. And frankly, I'm too excited about getting my hands on Pretty Colored Things to let it bring me down. Even better news: the Mr. and I are in agreement on colors for 3 rooms -- we're 60% of the way home, and still speaking to each other. Woo hoo!

But getting back to the semi-caustic substance in the spray bottle: it all began with our Mission Statement: Replace Ugly Crap With Nicer Stuff ... On Budget. To wit:
In a perfect world, I'd get rid of the ugly "oak" cabinets & start over. But in Our World, we're going with plan B. (No, not that Plan B. Nobody knocked up our cabinetry.) Plan B started out as "Let's just paint them white," but has since turned into "Let's get an electric sander & some varnish remover, so that the white paint we apply will a) stick, and b) not be lumpy." So while the Mr. has learned how to use varnish remover & not die (it involves gloves, a face mask, and not taunting the substance), I've been tackling the insides of the cabinets.

Fun fact: other people's shelf paper is disgusting! Especially when combined with All The Dead Spiders (see previous post -- free shipping offer still applies!)

Also, the previous owner's Stupid Plumber Tricks has led to 2 of the lower cabinets being rather mildewed. I discovered this as I was systematically scrubbing the living daylights out of them, and the ick-factor jumped from an 8 to a 10. At that point I stopped reaching in with my sponge and just basically sprayed & ran. That's when the miracle happened.

I came back the next day, and it was better. Dramatically better. It went from "Maybe we should just replace that" to "The patient is ALIVE!" I kinda wish I had a "before" picture to post here ... but then again, I wouldn't want to make anyone spontaneously kill themself in horror. Suffice to say: it may smell like the devil and wreak havoc on your cuticles, but I LOVE me some Lysol anti-mildew spray.

Back tomorrow to check the paint samples in better light. And yes, I will absolutely be addressing the ceramic floor tiles that go halfway up the walls -- count on it.

cost breakdown: candy buffet

One of the biggest "non-practical" elements of our wedding was our candy buffet. (It's also one of the only things featured in wedding magazines that I fell in love with. What can I say? I'm not completely impervious to pretty pictures.) I'm sure that we could have come up with a less expensive cost-per-guest party favor, but I figured that people had earned their sugar comas after all the dancing at our reception!

We had 9 different containers in our buffet: 3 apothecary jars & 2 decorative plates, all snagged at Ross. (I started looking very early in our planning process, in order to take advantage of post-Christmas sales. I basically grabbed anything white or metallic I could get my hands on.) I got creative when I found 2 big mercury class candle holders at Target (I just covered the pointy thing in the bottom with tissue paper), and I made a cake stand from a tutorial on OnceWed.com. At the last minute, I found a giant clear-glass vase that I already owned -- score!

Total: $69.18



For the candy, I realized pretty quickly that while lots of websites out there offer "discount bulk candy", the overnight shipping required to get it to Southern California in the summer, hopefully without melting, was a potential budget-buster. I got as much of it as I could at a local warehouse in downtown L.A.

10 lbs. each grapefruit sour gummies, butterscotch & Hershey's kisses = $68.88.

I got the rest from 2 online resources, and went for the 2-day shipping in protective packaging (still cheaper than overnighting it) just before temps soared for the summer.

10 lbs. each 7-up jelly bellies & white jordan almonds from bulkfoods.com = $99.56 + approx. $60 shipping.
10 lbs. "milkies" (like M&M's, but without the "M" so cheaper) & 5 lbs. champagne bubbles from Groovy Candies = $115.85 + approx. $40 shipping.

I also got 5 lbs. of white mints from Smart & Final for about $10. And somehow I got it into my head that I'd have a) the time, and b) the skill to make a thing or two. Yeah, I know ... overly ambitious = me. Fortunately, after my test run turned out poorly, I found these at Target:

White Oreos! Who knew?! (I didn't.) About $10 for 3 bags.

I made the signs for each container with leftover cardstock from our invitations -- printed at Kinko's -- and attached it with ribbon I found on sale. Instead of buying pricey labels from some online site, I printed some using Word on my home computer:

They seemed to get what I wanted to say across ... and I already had those labels, so they were free.

We decorated the table with the leftover bubble liquid bottles from our ceremony, and some matchbook notebooks that I made. I used the cardstock samples I'd bought when looking for our invitation paper, plus stamps that were in the set used on our invitations & plain computer paper. The upside to doing things yourself = re-purposing your leftovers!


I found the big scoops at a local party supply store (about $10) & decorated them with the same ribbon as on the container signs, and got the bags through a wholesale company. (I ended up with twice the amount I needed, so after selling the extras on Craigslist, they cost a net $13.)

Altogether, the candy buffet cost us about $545. Admittedly, it was kind of an extravagance, and I might have changed my mind if I'd known about the extra $100 in shipping charges from the beginning ... but it turned out beautifully, our guests loved it, and I was really proud of myself for pulling it off. So if anyone out there is planning something similar, I hope you find this useful!

playing catch-up

I figure I should probably finish posting about all the stuff leading up to the wedding before I start on the recaps. (Besides, I might have more photos by then.) So: here's my last 2 major projects.

1) Programs: The Mr. & I had agreed on the idea of fan programs (you know -- an outdoor wedding in August) quite a while back. But we hadn't finalized details like music choices until frighteningly close to the event itself. Good thing: we had exactly enough paper left over from making the invitations for these. Bad thing: I spent the better part of 2 days assembling them, becoming progressively less & less concerned with any semblance of "perfection."

This is what I started with.

This is the finished product.
Getting from point A to point B entailed a second trip to Kinko's when I realized I hadn't saved the file as a PDF, which caused my pretty script font to reset to something I think is called "Nerd-tastic Robot", making yet another trip to Target when I ran out of glue dots, and a stop at Michael's on our way out of town because I ran out of ribbon after making about 10 of them. Good times. But hey -- they're pretty.

2) Flowers: In a move that suprised even me, I decided to "wing it" when it came to the flowers. The Mr. & I swung by the S.F. Flower Mart on Friday morning & bought stuff we liked that was the right colors. Good thing: nice hotels will bring you all the extra vases you ask for, and even cart away the copious trimmings. Bad thing: I was hideously optimistic in estimating how much time the assembly would require.

This is what we started with:
From left to right, those are jade roses, white lilies dyed blue, cream roses and white freesia. I'm normally not a fan of dyed flowers, but the lilies pulled the color into their petals along the veins, which created an amazing, delicate stripey effect. We both gasped out loud when we saw them. Total cost of the above 7 bunches: $50 cash. And we found street parking -- woot!

After going through a lot of this:
and thoroughly soaking the jeans I was wearing, I ended up with these:


My bouquet was made of the cream roses and the freesia. It smelled amazing.

And these are my ultra-fab b-maids holding their bouquets of the jade roses, freesia & lilies.
I finished making them & wrapping them with florist's tape the day before, and plunked them in those hotel-furnished vases. At about 11 a.m. the day of, I just wrapped the stems with dusty blue ribbon. The groom's boutoniere was a single cream rose to match mine, and the g-men each had a jade rose. (That part was the Mr's idea -- oh yes, he's that good!)

This is my favorite picture of them -- all the flowers together:
Ps: if you are useless at maintaing nicely-manicured hands, fluffy flowers are your friend!

first 4 pics by me
last 4 pics by Marija Thomas Photography

look! i made ... goo.

I don't want to go so far as to say "I should've known better" ... but I think it's time to acknowledge my limitations.

I can design invitations. Build a website. Make paper flower-ball doodads. But this is what happens when I attempt to make homemade marshmallows for our candy buffet. Sigh. Not even my tray of the Place de la Madeleine from Fauchon can help this ... goo.

It doesn't look anything like the picture that came with the recipe. Cutting it into squares only marginally improved its appearance, and was a far messier operation than anticipated. (I now have vanilla marsh-goo between my toes.)

Also, I was promised "a lot of marshmallows" ... by my count, there are maybe 60 here (the tray is holding 3 layers of little snot-cubes). The recipe's author & I appear to have different definitions of "a lot." Then again, we clearly have many, many differences ....

Fortunately, I know myself pretty well. Which is why I made sure to note these while I was at Target buying the supplies for this experiment:

They make white ones!

Now who wants a snot-mallow? Anyone? ... hello?

perhaps I was overly ambitious: part 3

cost breakdown of invitations

I fear that these ended up costing more than I thought they would -- if I could even remember what I thought these things "should" cost, when I first got on this crazy ride. Ah, my long-lost naivete .... Nonetheless, I'm thrilled with how they turned out, and pretty amazed with what I was able to make happen within our budget. These figures are for a guest list of approximately 110 people.

cardstock in 2 colors: $81.00
printing: $58.01
envelopes: $25.00
envelope liners: $ 0.87
labels for addresses: $12.98
postage: $70.40
decorative stamping: $25.88
raffia ribbon: $4.20
glue sticks & dots: $7.29

total: $285.63
cost per piece: $2.10

I decided to go with cost per piece due to the one-page & two-page variations of our invitations. The vast majority of them are one-page, since we're able to include everyone at the informal party in Los Angeles. I suppose I could've figured out what percentage of the total were 1- or 2-pagers, and gotten a precise average cost per invitation ... but frankly, that's more math than I care to do.

Some of the things that helped me keep costs down:

* I found the envelopes on Craigslist -- someone had leftovers in the exact color, size & amount I needed.
* I quickly realized that it was cheaper to get cardstock from the manufacturer, even with shipping, rather than buy it 1 piece at a time whenever Michael's had it in stock ... not to mention the gas & time I saved.
* I lined our envelopes with a roll of wrapping paper on clearance from Target and leftover wallpaper I already owned.
* Rather than pay for a liner template I doubt I'd use again, I made my own.
* I bought a pack of full-sheet labels from Office Depot and cut them into wrap-around address labels.
* I taught myself how to use Photoshop, which allowed me to design our invitations, address labels & save-the-dates. It took some time, but I got exactly what I wanted, and there was no charge for proofs when I took my ideas to Mr. UB.
* We emailed our save-the-dates, which saved paper, printing & postage for that.
* All the invitations include our website, where people can email RSVPs -- again, no paper, printing or postage.

I don't suggest that my methods here are the best idea for everyone out there. It certainly helped that I had tons of free time this spring, as the acting biz was slow. I may not have been able or motivated to invest as much of my time as this took if I'd been busier. (Then again, if I'd been busier I probably could've afforded to out-source it.) Besides, I really enjoyed "the thrill of the chase" -- being on a mission that had me swinging by the gift wrap aisle of Target when I was just there for paper towels, or hunting down the company that made our cardstock (which was far more difficult than it should've been in 2009.)

Ultimately, it comes down to this: I'm stubborn. I have very particular taste, and I'm loathe to trust my vision to other people when I have the time & ability to do it myself. But I'm also very proud of myself -- so there.

perhaps I was overly ambitious: part 2

So, after all of that craziness from yesterday's post, these are my final results. I know some people wait until their recaps to reveal the look of their invitations, but I'm not sqeamish about that. If you're invited & you don't want the "spoiler", please skip this post!

There are two basic variations on our invitations: ceremony-&-reception, and reception-only. Without question, the absolute hardest part of our planning process has been deciding who we can afford to include at the ceremony. So it is extremely important to me that our invitations reflect an equal amount of care & handcrafting, whether the envelope contains one piece of paper or two. Also, I didn't have enough paper to line all of our envelopes identically, so I'm including pics of both liner colors.

These are the basic pieces I created:
One-piece invitation:


Two-piece invitation:


And here they are, all bundled up & ready to go.

I wish that the little gold swirlies (the same ones from our save-the-dates) printed on the address labels showed up better in my pics, but here's a close-up that's slightly sharper:

Please, Mr. Postman, take them away!

perhaps I was overly ambitious: part 1

Here we go: Invitation Construction-Palooza. As I documented each step of this little undertaking, I did ask myself, frequently, "what the hell was I thinking?!?" ... lest you a) think this crap is normal, or b) know me & fear that I've lost it completely. Then again, maybe I have. You be the judge:
That's what I started with. I designed the invites using Photoshop & paper samples from Michael's. Mr. UB and I picked the same 2 colors -- hooray! -- and he really dug my design. I thought about printing them at home, but a) my printer couldn't handle cardstock (I tried) and b) I'm sure I would've spent at least the same amount in ink as I did for Kinko's to print them.

I thought about having them cut by Kinko's, too, but the margins on my screen weren't matching what appeared on the page, and I was too paranoid to risk it. Solution:
Good thing I already own that paper cutter. (Why do I own it? Because somebody decided that even though paper is 8.5 x 11, actor headshots should be 8 x 10. I suspect the same person who decided to label garbage bags in gallons, and garbage cans in quarts. But I digress ...)

So I cut the ceremony invites to 4.5 squares, and the reception invites to 6.5 x 4.5. Then I cut the gold paper backing to 5 x 5 and 7 x 5, respectively, and started glueing.

That's the one that my printer ate halfway through, but hopefully you can get the idea. The next thing I had to deal with was unexpected: they started curling as the glue dried.

Who says book learnin' doesn't have practical applications? So after I left them to flatten overnight, I moved onto the next step: hand-stamping every piece.

Say it with me now: What was I thinking?!? Not only did I have to re-ink between every piece, and wait (again) for them to dry before the next step, but it took me 3 tries to find a level surface that didn't randomly leave blank holes in the middle of the designs. D'oh! Good thing I over-printed by a lot. Here's to not wanting to have to go back to Kinko's saving the day.

While I was waiting for the ink to dry, I cut the ribbon that was going to hold the pieces together (or just fancy things up a little, for the people we can only invite to the reception.)

Also, I discovered on my test piece that glue dots, rather than a smoosh of glue stick, was the way to go. Hello, trip to Target. And since I was already out & about, I took my test invite to the post office to get postage. The woman who helped me weighed it & pronounced it 1 oz. stamp-worthy ... until she noticed the knot in the ribbon. "Oh no," she told me, "if it isn't just flat paper, it's an extra $0.20. You have to take that off."

Oh, you silly Post Office Lady.

Do you realize who you're talking to? I am a Bride on a Budget. I have been researching every detail online to the brink of carpal tunnel syndrome. I have been arguing with vendors that I don't have to pay that much, or even have that at all. I have been defending my ideas, plans and vision for this shindig with friends, relatives, and even my darling fiance -- and holding my own in a non-'zilla way most of the time. And you think that you are going to talk me out of my pretty, shiny raffia ribbon? Ahem.

"Well then let's just pay the extra 20 cents. Yes, I like the wedding cake stamp very much. No, I don't want the red, white & blue star to make up the extra 3¢. Let's find something else. Thank you!" (Use every acting class you've ever taken to insert sincere smile here.)

So each one of our lovely envelopes will have one wedding cake & three Tiffany lamps.
The colors work. And the "extra" cost for keeping my raffia ribbon will be approximately $22. With everything else that we've saved money on, my regrets = zero. (I normally strive to say "us" rather than "me", but I'm the one with the issue here, so I'm owning it.)

Back to the salt mines. The first batch is drying on my floor.
Time to stick a glue dot on the back, tie a freakin' ribbon around it & stuff it in an envelope.

More to come: the final product, the cost breakdown, and why the f*** I did this by myself, despite multiple offers of assistance.