How to Choose Wedding Shoes...

I live in Montana. I love fun shoes. These two sentences are often contradictory. I usually leave the house in my Bogs (LOVE),

My Bog boots, in "Autum Leaves" on the bottom. I pretty much wear them every day.

… and change into professional shoes at work.

Getting married in July means I get to wear fun shoes. I won’t have to worry about snow. And if it rains… well the whole thing is screwed if it rains, so we’re going to pretend that I’ll be sunny and beautiful!

(DJ: I don’t care if you know what my shoes for our wedding look like. Really, I don’t. You’re welcome to click the link below if you want to know in advance. The purpose of this break is to respect your wishes to not know what I’ll look like on The Big Day.)

Pamphlet Sneak Peek...

I’m going to go ahead and share our Save the Date Pamphlets with you two weeks before they get mailed. They are not a huge secret, and I’m so excited about how they came out.


And besides, what I’m showing you isn’t the final, final version. That version is at the printers Right. This. Minute. And I’m off to pick up the envelopes from Ro Sham Bo this afternoon. And silver pens for Gretchen to address them with. And labels that we can print our return address on.

Do you know how to print labels? Can you teach me?

It’s like we’re really getting ready to send people the first part of an invitation to our wedding!

So, I’ve talked about the inspiration for for our Save the Date Pamphlets. To recap, we’re getting married in a kind of remote place. A place without a chain hotel, restaurant or even a gas station (no, I’m not kidding). To that end, DJ and I felt it was important to give our guests as much information as we could about the place we are asking them to travel to.

And then the idea for a National Park pamphlet was born.

And then I spend probably 15 hours designing the things in PowerPoint (glutton for punishment?).

And right now, they’re at the printers, being printed on 11 x 17” glossy paper. We’ll do the folding over Christmas. I’ll break down the costs in a later post.

And now, I present to you…. The Save the Date PAMPHLETS!!!

They fold four times lengthwise, then down the middle. They'll get stuffed into envelopes so this is the first page you see.

They get opened, and our names, dates, and contact information is to the right. Yes, I blotted it out for the internets.

Then they fold out, with an area map in the middle, and driving directions from all three roads into the area at the bottom.

We'll have friends and family coming from three directions. South, West and East. Those coming from the south are mostly family, and they know how to get to Harrison!

These fabulous maps were made by my dear friend Alli, who has a master's degree in GIS. Thanks Alli!!!

We used the NPS' design format to lay out the brochure. Users should be able to fold it down to just get to the map size they need.

The back has information about why we chose Harrison, average weather in July, where to stay, where to eat, and things to do in the area. Obviously this version still had some editing to do!

The same design standards apply to the backside. Guests should be able to fold it down to a smaller size to get to the information they need. (Yes, the map of Harrison looks like a boob. It's how the land is formed!)

Information about accomodations and activities.

I added this "stamp" all over the document. I am a little worried that since it's not a standard Save the Date postcard, people might get confused about what the heck we've just sent them. Hopefully this works!

So, all that's left on this project is pickin gup the mailing supplies, folding, addressing, and stuffing envelopes. Sounds like a project for over Christmas!

What do you think, are people not going to "get" our save the date pamphlets? Did anyone else do something different with their paper products?

December 15 Ten on Tuesday

1. I was talking to Jen last night driving home from an AOII meeting, and pulled a little too far forward in the garage. I bumped a potted plant and broke it.

2. I now believe that talking on your phone and driving is akin to driving drunk.

3. I still have a lingering cough. I've been sucking on cough drops at work, in meetings, at the gym, and as I fall asleep. DJ is hot for kissing a menthol flavored fiancee.

4. The correct usage of the F word (which DJ doesn't like), is fiance with one e for men, fiancee with two eé s for women. Learn something new every day.

5. We're embarking on the Washington holiday pilgrimage over Christmas. Another road trip!

6. Gretchen is coming back from Washington to stay with us until January 7th. She's suggested that I can make her my "bridal bitch". While she's here. She'll be addressing envelopes to send the Save the Date Pamphlets (at the printers now!)

7. I struggle with the lack of access to exercise when we visit family. I'm a gym goer, and when I don't get a chance to work up a good sweat daily I get grumpy. I'm taking my running shoes and hoping to sneak out and get my fix!

8. The high tomorrow is 40 degrees. It's been over a month since it’s been that warm!

9. The new grants person whom I report to for work is a firmer auditor... Talk about detail oriented. Which I, by rule, am not. It’s causing conflict.

10. I need to figure out how to print labels so that we can use them as a return address. I don't want t write out a return address for 130 invitations! I’m picking up the envelopes in “Lake Blue” today!

'Tis the Season

Wowzer, how’s that for falling off of the blogging wagon? Nearly two weeks! Unfortunately, I have only lame excuses. Throwing two holiday parties back to back, a serious case of the Chest Crud (cough, hack, belck), and a doubly serious case of procrastination. The chest cold is clearing up (literally, into my sinuses) but I think the procrastination is going to be around for a while.


So, now it’s The Week Before Christmas, and I’m trying to keep my shit together while picking up a few shifts at the gift store, catching up after being out of work at the end of last week, and preparing for being out of work all next week. Lots of lists going on over here.

I’ve gotten the outside Christmas lights up, as well as the rest of the house decorated… Like the lights?

I’ve gotten all my Christmas shopping done; except for gifts for my grandmothers. What, exactly, do you get the two women you’ve come to appreciate more and more every year?

Have I ever mentioned that Christmas is my favorite time of year? I love trying to give memorable gifts. I love the lights. I love looking forward to seeing my family. I love cookies.

And although we’re beginning the between the family rotation, I’m so excited to show DJ what a Colton Christmas is. A lot of people, presents, candy, schnitzers, laughter, and even more lights.

Traction

For some reason November was kind of a rough month for me. I couldn't seem to get an traction to get anything done, and I hate that. I like productive days where I can go home at the end of the day and feel like I Got. Shit. Done. You know?


Part of it was moving into a new house. It's overwhelming to look around and come up with an endless list of to-do's. Most pressing is the need to get a paperwork system devised, and a bills and office organization. I've (mostly) kept on top of everything, but honestly, I'm just not a great details thinker. I'm a better big picture person.

Which is why the AudioBook CD that I'd borrowed from the library for our Oregon trip in September went unreturned. I moved it twice, but apparently didn't have time to return it (despite going to the Library a handful of times in the last three months for work related stuff). It caught my attention on Tuesday morning when I received an emailed version of a letter from a collections agency regarding my overdue book and associated fine... Yep. Turned over to collections for a $10 late book fine.

I immediately returned the book and paid the fine, but still, I'm embarrassed about it. Embarrassed that somewhere between trying to juggle everything I let that ball drop. And such an easy one too!

I feel like part of being a grown up is having your business life in order. Marriage is, after all, a non-profit union for the joint protection of assets, isn't it? Our union isn't a fully complete one; we're still working towards a semi-merged financial system. There will be glitches along the way, but I'm mostly concerned that I will screw it up on my end. We've got a joint checking account, and for the first time in my life I'm actually writing stuff down in the register to account for every penny. I don't want to let DJ down on our shared assets.

Work has been busy, as usual, and I seem to be embroiled no less than three projects where the neighbors acidic relationships with each other just suck the life out of any forward progress on the projects. It's hard to stay focused on being a good public servant when you're receiving nasty-grams from people who accuse you of being unethical and an advocate for projects you didn't want to support but the Boss said you had to. Tough to recover from.

And I can't help but be super overwhelmed with Wedding stuff. I think it would have helped to find time for me, my mom and DJ's mom to sit down and think through the whole vision of the event. I have it basically all planned out in my head, but I haven't communicated it very well to anyone... And I was starting to lose sleep over how behind on the whole thing I felt. To the point that I actually took the entire day off on Tuesday (save for a late evening board meeting) to work on wedding stuff. All day long. No TV. Little facebook. Just me and focus! I knew I needed to work on it all day Tuesday for my sanity, and felt like I should be honest with my boss and not burn 8 hours of work time working on private stuff.

I feel substantially better today about where the wedding stuff is at. There were some setbacks, like calling the restaurant where the reception is going to be and finding the phone has been disconnected and they're closed for the season until the end of March. . But I mostly finished the Save the Date Pamphlets (still to do: final edits, drop them off to be printed), and worked on a sort of stream of consciousness wedding thoughts outline (sorry DJ, not everything fits into a spreadsheet!), as well as a checklist of tasks.

I'm going to start working on a monthly email to be sent to the 'rents and siblings on the 10th of each month leading up to the wedding, as a way to keep everyone informed. I plan to talk about what we've gotten done so far, assign tasks to be completed that month, and give an overview of where we are in the whole process. Can you think of anything else I should add?

The good news is that after spending 10 straight hours on wedding yesterday, I do feel better about it. And I actually had some forward momentum to get all of the random crap on m desk at work taken care of. It feels good to be productive and on top of things.

Or this

Things got a little crazy over here tonight. Since a sapphire blue is our color I played around with it... What do you think?

Also, check it out... our own wedding website!

Stamp

What about creating a stamp that says "Harrison, Idaho, July 10, 2010" instead of writing it out on the pamphlet??