Have a great weekend!
enJOY it
an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.
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CAKE : Thanks for your thoughts, encouragement, ideas, stories & emails with fun photos. A bunch of you mentioned cupcakes. I am right there with you. My mom and I tasted a few cupcakes at a local shop last weekend but between you and me, internet, we were not as impressed as we had hoped to be. So it's on the short list of things to consider but sadly not a knight in shining armor idea. What I did love most about your combined comments is the gentle reminder that anything goes, it's our cake and we'll make it work for us. Sweet.
PHONE : Early yesterday morning, in a feat that I wish had been captured on video, my sleeping self knocked my cell phone/blackberry off my bed and into a waiting cup of water. It was really a one in a million shot but of course it happened. The splash from it woke me up and I acted quickly to shove my phone into a bowl of dry rice to absorb moisture. Apparently though, I failed, and my blackberry seems to have short circuited. So NOW, I am making calls from a duct taped together flip phone that the rest of the family had deemed inoperative and traded up from. Temporary, but frustrating. And also email-less. Turns out having email at your fingertips really is an addiction that takes a few days to recover from.
PHONE UPDATE : I tried the phone again a few hours after writing this post and turns out a night with the rice was all it needed. Working great. SO GLAD!! Now I really should buy the big digital SLR before I break anything else.
DANCING WITH THE STARS : Anyone else hooked yet? Man, I LOVE fall television.
TRIPS : I am off tomorrow to LA for a great visit with a few of my girlfriends from college. I can't wait to see them. On Sunday, Paul is driving up from San Diego to get me and then we'll spend a week together there before flying up to Oakland for the USC v. CAL game that Saturday. Quick & fun journey, it will be fantastic. I will be blogging all next week with albums on the road, plenty of photos and the save the date reveal. I hear on good authority that my decorated envelopes are making their way to homes everywhere. I realize now, I should have sent one to Paul who really never saw it. HA!
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This whole "plan a wedding" plan has shook out pretty well. There are certain decisions to be made but minimal drama in making them. I limit my options, and go with my instinct. Like the dress: it is pretty, it fits well, Paul liked it online and it feels like me. DONE. Like the venue: it's beautiful, it's near the church, the staff is nice and the food is good. DONE. Like the flowers: they're lovely, simple & orange. DONE. And on and on and on.
So, somewhat naively, I thought ordering a cake would be well…a piece of cake.
One thing that Paul and I agree on is that it's more important that the cake tastes perfect than looks perfect. (READ: NO FONDANT.) We both love carrot cake and decided we would go with a few minimally decorated tiers with cream cheese frosting. I wanted something that looked like this or this.
And then, in July, we went to the bakeries and our dreams melted.
Did you know that cream cheese frosting is too soft to stack into tiers? It is.
"No worries," we said, "we'll just get a few round cakes and place them at different heights next to each other." It will look cool, we figured. We even drew a sketch of our plan.
Did you know that the cream cheese frosting will melt if not refrigerated? It will.
"Hmmmmm." we said.
It took awhile to get all the information, but every bakery vetoed our cream cheese frosting plan. They were all willing to make carrot cake with butter cream frosting but that sort of defeats the purpose. Cream cheese frosting sort of makes the carrot cake.
Since then, I have just sort of ignored the cake issue. If possible, I would continue to ignore it until April 25th, but something tells me that is a lame idea.
What we know is that taste matters above all. So part of me thinks we just get a few fabulous tasting carrot sheet cakes and keep them refrigerated until it's time to serve. For the all important cake cutting ceremony (which really no one but the photographer seems to notice) Paul and I could use a small round carrot cake that gets brought out just in time to be cut and ate by us.
Thoughts on cake, internet? Did you have carrot cake at your wedding? DID IT MELT? Do you hate cake and think we should serve pie? Are you a local Sacramento baker who makes fabulous carrot cake? I'd love to hear.
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It doesn't feel like a new season on this coast, but I am going to act like it does. These next few months will fly with Paul away and then Thanksgiving and then the big reveal when we find out where we'll live as newlyweds from June 2010 – June 2011. Lots of promise tucked within the next 90 days and it starts now… I am off to WORK at Starbucks. I need to pull some PDFs together for my current workshop which ends Friday as well as "get crafty" from last spring. I hope to have instructional PDFs available for sale early next week.
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My parents get an insane amount of mail. When this orange security envelope came in the door last week I went sort of crazy. Too cool. I am waiting for the day when a scrapbook company produces security envelope paper. You know, for projects like this. Subtle, two color patterns are my favorite right now.+
I saw September Issue on Friday. It was good. Funny even, which I had not expected. One line by Grace Coddington, the magazine's Creative Director, struck me. I wish I had written it down or was able to find it online, but the gist was : "I never sleep in the car. I look out the window because you never know what you will see and how it will inspire you."
I need a long car drive right about now. I need some new inspiration. I need a project and a plan and I am probably not looking as hard as I should be to find it. What do you have for me Monday?
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Stamped & addressed. According to my to-do list, they just need to be sealed and stuck with a return address. I obsessed over the stamps a little bit. If you are a girl, you get a queen stamp. If you're a guy, a king. If you're in a couple, you got what I had available. If you took all the slightly OCD brides and stuck them together in a room I think we could rule the world – or kill each other. One of the other FOR SURE.Either way, badda bing, badda boom, it's getting done. (Once I am sure that the Save the Dates have safely arrived at their destinations, I will post photos of the completed cards. And THOSE photos will not be blurry like these.)
As much as I love working out every detail of this wedding and putting my "stamp" on everything, I am ten times more excited to have a marriage with Paul. April 24th will be fabulous and fast and pretty and exciting, but April 25th will be real. I cannot wait. Paul, why on earth did we decide to have this loooong of an engagement?
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Fun links that I loved this week :
- polka dot robot is open for business!
- our wedding photographers got THEIR wedding photos back
- maybe I could make these?
- vision board – this is genius.
- too cute 2010 calendar.
Have a great weekend. I'm seeing The September Issue, watching USC play & testing out some possible wedding cupcakes.
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I am having the hardest time settling into a grove while staying in California. It's difficult to get "work" done and feel like progress is being made on any of my to do lists. It's also beyond frustrating to not have my printer or my coffee maker to help get me through the day.
But even so, it is nice to be with my fam and soaking up California air. And I did manage to get some wedding stuff accomplished yesterday. Our wedding website is nearly complete save a few minor additions. That feels good. I am also working on the save the dates and drew orange flowers on 107 envelopes. I am a big believer in a decorated envelope and the flowers seemed to fit the bill. I ordered the crazy popular king and queen love stamps and they are even more perfect in real life. Small steps. I am taking small productive steps.
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The first half of my diptych project is over. It's an interesting challenge which has resulted in some boring, but some fun pairs. There are no rules except that both photos have to be taken the same day and I can't do any post shot cropping. The images is what it is. I am going to keep this up for the rest of the month.
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Wanted to share the beginnings of my new and improved FALL book. I channeled jamaica for this one with the rounded corners, transparent cover and thick, thick pages. I hope to keep it up and fill it all season. But I have failed on the start to finish plan before.Calendar pages are egg press and ilee. Little manila file tabs from Staples. Buttons from the little packets that come attached to my j.crew sweaters. Little bookboard pages are Maya Road and the clear cover is a Hambly Clearly Heavy Overlay.
enJOY it 