Wedding: Invitations

the invitations to our wedding were the most trying part of all the planning.

It also happened to be my favorite.

my brother in law, Sam, did the calligraphy on 100+ of the announcements.

he said that he wanted to learn how to do calligraphy,

so i hired him to do some of our envelopes.

he did an amazing job and they looked like they were done by a professional.

jon was home in December 2009 for christmas and to take our engagement photos.

after that, he didn't come home until the wedding.

he didn't get to see any of the wedding planning or anything firsthand.

which is why i sent him an invitation of his own.

i looked everywhere for antique stamps with no success, so i just used the king and queen 'love' stamps from the post office.

i think they looked great.

i found a website, One Kings Lane, signed up for it and received $10 to spend on their website.

so i bought a stamp. i think it was $15.

this is the photo that went out with the invitations.

thank you Kylie.

(ps compare his medal from december to his medals at the wedding)

the colors are bad on these.

the design on the top is the same green as the announcement and the same green on Jon's uniform.

Sam helped me pick out the fonts for the announcements.

He is a graphic designer and now a calligrapher.

Let me know if you are interested in either of those things from him.

i debated for a long time about putting 
where we are registered on the invite or not.

i finally decided not to.

i emailed Jaffa Printing and told them not to put it on there.

after a few days, i couldn't get it out of my head.

we were moving two days after the wedding and i didn't want to get gifts from all over the place and have to come to california and figure out where we got everything and have to return stuff we didn't want or didn't register for or got duplicates of.

so i finally decided for sure that we wanted it on there.

my dad talked me into it and said that people don't like getting invitations and not having where they are registered on there. i agree, because its easier to get the bride and groom something they want rather than try to guess.

anyway, target was a great place to register and it was really good that we put it on there.

we got a lot of stuff off our registry. thank you everyone.

and Mountain America was also an AWESOME place to register. i highly recommend.

Jaffa was really great to work with. I recommend them as well.

more wedding posts to come.

200th post.

we got our wedding photos back.

the files are quite large, i'm trying to figure out how to go about getting all the pictures onto my little laptop.

until then.

i think this is my favorite one.

knotts berry farm

a couple months ago i saw a deal on TravelZoo for Knotts berry farm.

one night stay in their hotel-

and two tickets to the theme park.

$100.

i paid for it two months ago.

We're leaving today on our "It feels like its free" free vacation.

ciao!

picture update. 6/1/10

this is the first dinner that i made at our new little house. the main dish isnt on the table yet.

jon, his marine bf, and i ate. it was fun and yummy.

brother and sister vigil invited us to the padres game!

they have been so good to us. letting me stay there while we were dating, letting jon borrow their car until i moved here, etc etc etc....

the game was so much fun. and free.99 for everyone! judy got tickets through her work.

jon was making a mess in my car every day.

finally he decided to wear a bib.

brittany hall and her new husband scott came into town! they called us and we all went to the san diego zoo. they came over to our house after and we had dinner and played dominos. it was really fun and jon and i were both happy they called us.

strangely enough, we didn't get any pictures with them. so it looks like jon and i were at the zoo alone.

this gorilla was scorching my legs.

our visitors came into town friday! look how fun and messy our house is when visitors come and bring gifts and goodies from home!

alex and i looking at the seals and marveling over their cuteness.

my man and i in la jolla.

i thought this picture was cute. they look so much alike.

family day. this is us next to our little house. we lucked out and got an end duplex so we only share one wall. this is before we went to eat in old town.

we love when alex takes our picture. :)

beach sundee. beautiful day.

my first sunday dinner! weird that we took this picture without the food, but we do have our pretty bouquet in it. we bought it for memorial day.

i laughed when i saw that jesus was hanging out on my shoulder. jon didn't seem to think it was as funny.

sea world. jon picked up star fish. so ick.

and i touched the sting rays! there is Counts with us being our son for the day.

last night we went to the dollar zone at target. it was very good to us.

we got him and her hats.

we wore them to our neighborhood BBQ and jons marine friends were so pleased.

after four weeks off work, jon is going back tomorrow. what will i do!!?

oh yeah..i guess i can look for a job.

wish me luck.

we have a great life.

i am so happy. i have such a fun life.

last week we went to Balboa Park.

we got in free to the Museum of Photographic Art. it was so cool, i love stuff like that. we saw a lady taking pictures with a huge nice camera, so we asked her to take ours in front of the park and fountain. she took like 8. this is just one of them.

we walked around for while, and walked through a pretty botanical garden. founded by Alfred Robinson I guess. maybe my uncle or great great.

our cutie friend got us a picnic basket and a blanket. we had a fun picnic at the park! she filled our basket full of food, snacks, napkins, spoons etc..so cute.

Jon's family came into town this weekend.

It was so fun.

On saturday, we went to Mission Beach.

oh the waves were so big. we got tossed all around.

Then we went to la jolla to see the seals, and dinner in old town.

sunday (...) we went to the beach again.

the waves were even bigger.

then we hosted our first sunday dinner!!!

mother in law and boyfriend, brother in law attended.

two people from utah attended.

and amanda and nephi came!!!

i think it was a success! we're working on getting enough kitchen chairs for everyone.

(also dad, a leaf for the table would be nice.)

it was so much fun to have the family here.

we played games and laughed after dinner.

today, memorial, we went to sea world.

it was honor our heroes day!!!

so we honored jon and his good friend by all getting in free.

it was a fun day and we were all sun burned.

after sea world, jon and I made homemade oreos again and had his friend over to eat them and play games.

i just wanted to make sure you all knew i was happy.

room updates.

Our room is getting there!

We've done a little bit to our bedroom and our bathroom...that's about it.

We hung up that picture for now. We have drapes to hang up! We don't have a curtain rod yet.

the cream colored afghan on the bed is made by my loving aunt Camille.

the colorful afghan is made by my favorite granny. it is so perfect for my...

yes my Eames rocker given to me as a wedding gift from my baybay!!!:) i love it!

we got our framed print at-

FerntreeStudio

my favorite seat in the house.

rug from ikea. laundry basket was my dads when he was a kid.

its been so fun! its not done yet.

there is a mirror on Jon's side of the bed, but it hasn't been fully put together yet. i'll post pictures when it has.

our front door with our new (tiny) rug!

cookies!

my aunt gave me a cute recipe book at one of my showers.

i thought i'd try it out this week and of course i skipped through the meals and courses to the desserts.

i found cookies similar to the cookies you make for homemade oreos.

but with mini chocolate chips or mini M&M's. we did chocolate chips.

the recipe is from the "Worldwide Ward Cookbook. Mom's Best Recipes"

They're called "Six-Dollar Cookies"

It says to bake them for 13 minutes (the recipe comes from Utah). We baked them for 13 and they came out like this. The bottoms were a little bit crunchy.

this is when we baked them for 11 minutes. They were so soft. 11 minutes worked a lot better in California's altitude.

they were really good, but they were missing something. So i added frosting. This frosting is made with 2 cups of powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons of butter, 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla and 1/2 a block of cream cheese. it was so good!

these cookies taste like you're eating a really yummy cloud. let me know if you want the recipe!