Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

June and July in Review

The last couple of weeks of July were crazy, as the beginning of August has been–I got promoted at work and my hours have doubled! I’m very thankful for the income since we had two very costly car maintenance issues to take care of (4 new tires on one, and 2 new brakes on the other) but also look forward to scaling back the hours in September when more associates are hired to lighten the load. 

I haven’t had a lot of time to blog due to my crazy schedule, so looking back on the past few months has been really fun for me and inspired me to get going on a bunch of new posts for August and September! 

I got a lot of blogging done in June! The organization bug bit me not once, but twice. 

Salvation Mountain, Outside Niland, CA

Something about the summer had me pondering travel and we did get a chance to sneak away to Salvation Mountain for a day with Angela and Palm Springs (part 1, part 2) with Doug for our annual anniversary trip. 

The Saguaro Palm Springs

We did some rearranging of the apartment to accommodate a big green sofa we bought and a glass table from my parents. 

Switcheroo

I felt mixed emotions in regards to so many bloggers picking up and moving this season–lots of excitement that I get to follow along virtually, and lots of jealousy as I long to own a condo/townhouse/house of my own. Lessons in patience. More frustration followed as a bunch of noisy Irish college-aged “kids” moved into the apartment and kept me up ’till all hours of the night. This frustration resulted in a big gripe list. Good news: most of them are now gone! 

My Blurb book

I finally got around to gushing about how much I love the company Blurb and sharing my experience in creating two books using their service. 

I proclaimed “kitchen week” and created two product roundup boards–one of my 5 essential kitchen tools, and one for 5 frivolous but awesome kitchen tools. Not to mention inspiring colorful kitchen spaces. 

My Makeup Bag

Wedding week arrived, and I shared my quick and easy makeup routine. Now that I work in an upscale mall I feel more pressure motivation to “put on my face” every day, and instead of resenting it I really enjoy making myself look nice on a regular basis. Whoda thunk! 

Whew! Yes, like I said I got a lot of blogging done in the past two months! Isn’t it weird how far gone the beginning of June seems? Except, it really wasn’t that long ago! It’s been a crazy summer! 

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now

It’s storytime…

Last Thursday we walked through two apartments in the affordable midcentury-hipster-chic neighborhood of North Park, here in San Diego. We’d found the units on Craigslist and coincidentally they were right next door to each other. The first, a recent renovation (recent as in, the paint was still wet) was decked out with fabulous carpet and a brand new custom IEKA kitchen and white quartz counters that had me drooling. The problem was that it was move-in-ready, like, within the next two weeks (our lease here goes until the end of September). The second unit was part of a triplex next door that was seriously ancient, disgusting, and awful. Both units cost over $200 less than our current space, but were also significantly smaller–up to 200 sq ft smaller.

We drove around North Park, Normal Heights, and University Heights jotting down “for rent” numbers with stars in our eyes. We came home with every intention of putting in our notice and planning to hire movers for late September. I left to meet up with a blogger I found through her home tour on A Beautiful Mess, and Doug was going to go downstairs to have a pow-wow with our leasing office.

I came home a few hours later (Jen and I had a great time!) to ask Doug how everything went. I found him asleep on the couch. The pow wow with our leasing office never happened. Then something strange happened… we agreed that after touring those apartments and very seriously entertaining the idea of moving next month, we both felt like the extra 200 sq ft was reason enough to stay. To make sure it wasn’t just cold feet, I searched CL a bit for larger units and two-bedrooms in North Park and found that they cost the same amount we are paying right now. Then, we did some calculations in regards to a) doubling up on rent for two weeks, b) coming up with a security deposit, and c) paying movers, etc… and it just makes sense to stay put for the next 10-12 months, even with a medium rent hike ($40). Even though my gripe list with our current apartment is very long, the noisy summer partiers (my biggest frustration) have moved on and things are just comfortable here.

After hanging art

With that resolution agreed upon, we decided to put down roots here. We’re going to make more holes in the wall. We’re going to sell some furniture and buy some other furniture. We’re going to make the rooms right, as opposed to okay for now. We’re going to have people over more often and finally turn our temporary cookie cutter into our home. 

DIY Wedding Invitations

Well, Stephanie is in Maui and I’m missing her like crazy. Is there a better way to get over it than to reminisce about the planning and preparation that led up to last weekend? Is it too early to reminisce?

If you’ve planned a wedding you know that invitations are crucial for setting the tone of the event and can get expensive really quickly. I’ve seen invite suites that exceed $4 per invite… if you plan on inviting 100, 200, 300 people the price can get astronomical very quickly. Lucky for me, I have some wonderful friends in the printing business. They designed and printed my wedding invites for me in 2010, and have always been patient in indulging my amateur graphic designer side by allowing me to submit my own work for them to print. Case in point: Stephanie’s wedding invitations!

For her event, Steph wanted a simple and classy affair, and chose the color scheme “magenta with metallics.” Early in the planning process she had also mentioned working in Art Deco elements, so I took a few cues from that and created something that I think fits the bill and is unique. Do you think it fits the vision?

The paper looks pretty white on my computer screen, but FYI, it was printed on an ivory-cream stock.

DIY Wedding Invites

I created them using Microsoft Publisher, since that’s the program I’m most familiar with. I now have the full Adobe suite on my mac and would love to learn more programs, but time wasn’t cooperative in this case. So Publisher it was. I think they turned out very nicely.

DIY Wedding Invites

The fonts are Chopin Script, Castellar, and Baskerville Old Face… in case you were curious.

Since the invite suite was simply cream with black text (classy looking , AND cheaper that way!) We used metallic bronze envelopes to spice things up. I think it worked really nicely. We were able to print these for right around $80–including 200 invites, RSVP postcards (two sided) and the info cards. The envelopes added a bit to the cost but we definitely saved a lot of money compared to ordering suites online or out of one of those catalogs they have at print shops.

Here are some of my tips in case you’re interested in trying this out yourself:

  • Look at other invites to see what kind of styles you like and would feel confident in mimicking.
  • Make lots of test prints! What looks good on your computer might look very different on paper.
  • Keep things simple! By limiting my color scheme to black and white, I was able to easily drop in some art deco designs I found online.
  • Limit yourself to three kinds of fonts. This is a basic graphic design tip you’ll see all over the place. If you start going too crazy with fonts, things can become too busy and look more amateurish than you need to.

Have you ever designed your own paper goods? Business cards? Christmas cards?