ducksandbooks

*written 3/23/10 @ 9:15 PM*

I bought these mugs today for MiMi and Sara as thank you presents for hosting my bridal shower. I tried to make them cute, double sided aprons (black with white polka dots on one side and black/white/yellow/pink tulips on the other, with pink edging), but my sewing machine didn’t want to cooperate with me and kept getting getting thread goobers on the back side of the fabric.

Anyway, I hope they like these mugs. I think they’re really cool, and Amazon gave them a great rating for the lid not leaking and being microwavable and double walled, though I can’t find it again :-/, I swear it WAS there. Oh well, hooray for reusable mugs that look like styrofoam take-out! I think they’re adorable.

All of our save the date magnets (expect for a few of Ben’s friends who have no decorum) have been mailed!

Yey!

We ordered these a while back, from poseprints.com, and they were moving their office at the time. Things got complicated because I accidently ordered too few and tried via voice mail to change my order (I refuse to email my credit card info). About a month after our initial order we got the increased order in the mail at no extra charge! (I called to check on this, since it was totally my fault that I hadn’t ordered enough and Jen, the owner, explained that their usual turnaround was 7-10 days and that she was comping us the extra 25 magnets because we got lost in the move.)

They came with envelopes (linen-y feeling, and not thick enough to not been seen though) and little plastic sleeves and the magnets themselves are nice and thick and glossy and rounded on the edges like they were made of enameled. Definitely worth the sale price we’d paid for them. If there were actual product photos on the site, I might even go so far as to say that they’re worth the full price, but why bother when we were able to get 50% off? I’d take a picture of the one on our fridge, but there’s a cute/funny/naughty magnetic poem next to it and I don’t want to disturb the tableau.

the blip on Ben's cheek is gone in the final copy

That’s the true size. This is the proof and I commented on the response form that there was a white blip on Ben’s inside cheek, they got back to me right away that they weren’t sure what that was but that it would be gone in the final product (it was).

Hand addressing them was a fun adventure too. I used a green ballpoint pen and just started working my way down the list while the dude tried to figure out how to print the return address on the little envelops and how to format the printer. We got done at about the same time since he could only feed 5 or so at a time and kept taking breaks to make dinner while I addressed away.

Anyway, they’ve been mailed to family and out of town friends, handed out to local friends, and we’re waiting to distribute a few more by hand (Ben can’t seem to wrangle the last few addresses) at our engagement/tea party at his parents’ house in 2 weeks. I would have saved postage and handed out more, but my aunts wanted to host a bridal shower which made me want to meet his family friends more (thus the tea party) and I wanted the magnets in the mail before people got invited to a party/shower and didn’t actually know when the wedding is scheduled for.

Oh, and one last thing, the envelope is standard size and the magnet isn’t a bump. I tried going to the neighborhood post office and the jerk behind the counter gave an envelope a eyeball and hefted it and told me that it was undersized and too thick and would need extra postage. I had 105 US and 3 international to mail, I was not about to pay $0.64 for domestic mailings and who knows how much for international. I calmly walked out and drove to CU’s off-campus book store where I there’s a postal annex (it’s also just over a mile closer than going all the way downtown). I told the woman behind the counter what had happened at the last post office so she weighed, measured, and stuck the envelope through a slotted plastic thingy. It passed all the tests of being a normal, mailable envelope and she then handed me a bucket of $0.44 stamps to pick through and helped another customer. WOW! Even though I have to drive past the local post office and then another 2 miles and look for parking when I get there, when it comes time to mail anything ever again, I’m going to the bookstore annex so that I can get some decent customer service! The local post office is now only good for picking up oversized packages, IMHO.

Like fancy stamps! Wow. Zazzle is a cool service that lets you print your own stamps. That’s nifty, right? To see your own artwork on stamps? Yes, but there’s over a 100% markup for it! It’s about $20 for a sheet of 20, $0.44 stamps. Yes, you read that right, more than twice what the stamps are worth as postage. Cool stamps are just not worth paying almost 2/3 more than the postage value of the stamp. We’re going to stick with standard USPS stamps for our invitations (when we get around to ordering, printing, and mailing them this summer). Just that I’d share this PSA.

BTW, where is our invitation to DJ and Jeanine’s wedding? It’s 7 weeks away and I’m not about to make formal plans to go until I get an invitation…. They asked for our address and we talked about how excited we were to come when they visited in October. My parents haven’t gotten their invitation yet either, so I don’t think we’re no longer invited. Oh well. We’ll just keep their wedding date on the calendar and keep any travel plans on hold until we get the GO signal via mail. [Hopefully this won't be a concern for our wedding since we sent out save the date magnets and will be mailing the invitations 9 weeks out. 3 weeks is long enough to respond, right? That gives us 6 weeks of working with actual attendance numbers to make plans here.]

Last weekend I was in Macy’s returning some shirts I had bought for Ben off of the clearance rack (where they should have stayed, if I’d bothered to look past the size/price tag/color), and I saw a platter on a clearance table and brought it over to casual china section to compare it to the tableware we had registered for [at Bed, Bath & Beyond, not Macy's]. Upon closer inspection, under stronger lighting, I discovered that I absolutely hated the blue color we had registered for as our dairy dishes!

Thankfully, no one had bought us any blue goodies yet, so I’ve swapped out the offending color (it looked too much like overdyed denim from the late 90s) for “green” which looks like robins eggs would if they were a nice, muted minty green instead of a cheerful pale blue. So, I introduce to you, GREEN:

Noritake Colorwave Coup, Green

This evening was spent dragging Ben to the mall in Broomfield to show him how hideous the blue was under good lighting (why is the china department lit so moodily and warm?) and see if he agreed to switch to the green or if there was something else that tickled his fancy. After some poking around, he agreed to switch to the green. I’m quite pleased with this decision because 1) it got rid of the blue and 2) the green is even more different from the similar pattern we picked out in black for meat dishes than the blue were [see: Colorwave Rims, Graphite]. The only similar shapes are the mugs (oh, how I wish we could order sets without them!), cereal bowls, and the serving bowls.

While we were at the mall we also went to Crate and Barrel, where I showed Ben some of the things I had added to our registry since we’d last visited together, as well as what I had deleted and why. He also went around trying (and succeeding in some cases) to bend spoons like we had when we looked the first time. Thankfully, the flatware we’d registered for to replace the Target chic dairy set we’ve been using still held up to the test. It is especially important for dairy spoons to not bend so that there is less evidence of late night ice cream raids….

The last place we stopped at the mall was our third registry spot, Williams-Sonoma, our more frivolous list. There are just a few things on there that we really want: Ben wants the boning knife, I want the mini-Santoku knife, and I really- really, really want the heaviest glass cake plater/dome that I’ve ever encountered. You can even invert the pieces and use it as a punch bowl or to serve a trifle in! I have no idea where I’ll store it, but it might just live on the counter, holding a smattering of glass fish, or something equally crazy. For some unknown, impractical reason I adore this damned thing!

Glass Domed Cake/Punch Bowl, via Williams-Sonoma

as unmarried partners, next time we fill out a census form we’ll be married and hopefully own wherever we’re living (not renting) and have babies to take up more columns on the form. Filling it out for just 2 people felt wasteful!

http://www.ultimateweddingcontest.com/entries/39436

I’ve entered Ben and myself in a silly contest. I’m not really interested in the first prize (some “dream wedding” package with a celebrity wedding planner), but the runner up prizes of varying amount gift certificates to Crate & Barrel DO appeal to me.

You can vote once with each email address you have, so dig up those old passwords and vote for Ben and me!

My aunt and cousin are hosting a bridal shower for me while we’re home for passover in 3 weeks, and I learned today that there are over 20 people coming! Since my mom’s cousin is so sick, I wasn’t sure who all is coming. There will be quite a few people not there, but I’m excited to see the people who are able to make it.

Here’s my issue: what the heck do I say to people when they ask what I want off the registry? All the things we registered for are things we want! I guess there’s a priority: flatware, cookware, everyday china, everything else on the registry.

Couture flatware, via Crate and Barrel

Cuisinart Non-Stick Hard Anodized Green Gourmet (dairy), via BB&B

Colorwave Blue (dairy), via BB&B

Colorwave Graphite Rim (meat), via BB&B

I’ve lost about 10 lbs. in the past 6 months, I haven’t particularly been trying to, just eating out less. I was also doing more manual labor than I was used to previously when I was working at the bakery. That’s right, I WAS working at the bakery and am no longer. They tried to force me into being a donut fryer and I wanted nothing to do with it; I didn’t think it would be safe for me to work from 2-6AM during hours when I would otherwise be 100% asleep. So, I tried to get my hours changed and ended up quitting instead. I’m disappointed to be out of a job, but not sad to be out of a place where in 6 months I was involved in 3 safety incidents scalding myself, getting chemical burns on my arm (all healed up now), and falling on my knee so hard on ceramic tiles that I still have a mild case of bursitis.