Jaxon's 6th Birthday

Jaxon had an awesome garbage truck themed party for this 6th birthday. His mommy JoAnna and I worked on some fun printed items for his big day. We started with basic green garbage trucks because they are pretty common, but then Jaxon asked his mom to ask me to change them to red, because that’s what the garbage trucks look like in his neighborhood.

Custom invitation:

After the invitations were printed and sent, Jaxon had another request for the red garbage truck: could I add the grabbing-arm that is on the side of the trucks. So I made it holding the number six for the favor labels, welcome sign, and t-shirt graphic.

I LOVE the mini trash can favors!!

T-shirt graphic:

Happy, happy birthday Jaxon!!

Amanda & Danny's Baby Shower

Amanda and Danny are expecting their first baby! To celebrate they had a co-ed baby shower that included elements from Star Wars, Harry Potter and Dr. Who. I was thrilled to create some printed elements for the party.

Custom invitation:

*Address and phone numbers have been changed to protect privacy.

Can you spot all of the references from the three different fandoms? Elder Wand, owl & baby drawing, Marauder’s Map footprints, and chapter stars from Harry Potter. Doctor Who quote and Tardis, fonts, light sabre, and Chewbaca’s bandolier from Star Wars. The background also features Gryffindor and Ravenclaw house scarves and a scarf from Dr. Who. Amanda had the invitations printed with Snapfish.

I created a pennant banner with a fun, space background.

Some of the pennants had elements from the themes. This one had the Ford Anglia from Harry Potter. One also had Dr. Who’s Tardis, and others had a Millennium Falcon and an Tie fighter from Star Wars.

I created these favor tags too.

For the front door I created this fun welcome sign. It includes lots of elements from the invitation.

Congrats to you both and I can’t wait to meet your little boy!

Juliana's 5th Birthday

Juliana had a sweet party at a petting zoo for her 5th birthday. Her mom, Kelly really didn’t want to do a cowgirl or a farm theme, so we created this cute invitation with lots of farm animals and a lovely photo of the birthday girl herself.

I hope your party was lots of fun Juliana, happy birthday!

Aubrey's 7th Birthday

When Jamie was planning her daughter’s 7th birthday party, she wanted a Wonder Woman theme, but Jamie wasn’t in love with the designs she was seeing at her local party store. She and I chatted about custom options, but I don’t have a license to use logos and artwork from Wonder Woman, so we created this Wonder Woman-inspired birthday invitation with a comic book vibe and I really love how it turned out!

Happy happy birthday Aubrey!

Jake's 3rd Birthday

Big boy Jake had an awesome construction-themed party for his 3rd birthday. His mommy, Kelly and I created these fun invitations for the big day.

I hope you had a great party Jake!! Happy birthday!

Ashley & Scott

Ashley and Scott had a beautiful wedding in Alberta, Canada this summer and I was honored to design invitations for the big day. Ashely said her bouquet was going to have a mix of pale pink flowers and a few succulents too, so I reflected that in the graphics on the invitation. One of her bridesmaids, Sarah is a longtime friend of mine and she was gracious enough to send me fantastic photos of the finished invitation. Thank you Sarah!!

To finish everything off, the pocketfold was wrapped with a custom belly band with the couple’s monogram die-cut in the card stock. The monogram isn’t my design, but I wanted to share it anyway because it’s such a beautiful element! Lastly they were mailed in pale pink envelopes.

A heartfelt congrats to the happy couple!!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Yesterday was our 11th wedding anniversary. We ran errands, visited a friend to pick up a bicycle, my oldest had a taekwondo sparring class, we all took a naps…. kind of a typical Saturday for us. Then my husband got on a plane heading to the east coast for a few days of work while I tried not to rage-clean our house since we have family coming to visit this week.

We rarely do much to celebrate our anniversary, it happens to fall during a busy time of year, and a week before our oldest son’s birthday. We don’t take much time to do something special that would likely require a babysitter. Sometimes we’ll go out to dinner, but usually all the celebrating that happens is when we both change our FB profile pictures to a fond memory from our wedding day. As silly as that is, it’s fun to reminisce.

Instead, we try our damnedest to take those dinners out when we DO have the chance, it’s just rarely ON our anniversary. If anything, we have Parent’s Night Out once a month when our kids spend four hours at our taekwondo studio and we go out do dinner and usually do some grocery shopping sans kids.

Yesterday I showed our boys this photo from our wedding and at least they recognized us. We had Chinese lion dancers at our wedding; my husband’s request. They were so awesome!! When my youngest son saw the lion dancer, he thought it was Santa Claus.

I chatted with a friend a while back and we discussed how much has changed in the wedding planning world since we got married 10+ years ago. If we were getting married again (hypothetical, of course), would we do anything different?? For me, not a ton. Although the awesome Chinese restaurant where we had our reception is no longer there. Aside from that, I still love most of what my husband and I planned for our wedding.

• I’d wear more interesting jewelry. I think what I wore barely shows up in photos and I would have liked something with a little more bling. Even more so with the jewelry I wore with my Chinese reception gown. The necklace was an heirloom from my husband’s late grandma (I’d still wear that), but I wish I’d worn some rad, chandelier earrings.

• I’d ditch the veil. It got snagged on a rose bush as my dad and I were walking toward the aisle and popped right off my head. I didn’t wear it at all at the reception, so it was kind of a waste.

• Spend more money on photography and communicate better with the photographer. We have lots of good photos, but also lots that are missing because our photographer insisted on a photojournalistic style (no pics of my mom and me, no pics of my siblings and me, stuff like that). I kept my photography budget very small, but we ended up saving money elsewhere and we could’ve spent more on another photographer.

• Skip the videography.

• Choose different bridesmaids. Two of them are no longer part of my life, so I’d obviously have different ones now. But two would still be there.

• I’d design my invitations only a little differently… not the pocketfold construction or the Chinese portion, but I’d use different fonts and make it less wordy on the English side. I still love the Chinese brocade pattern I created for the paper and the colors.

That’s it. I wouldn’t change anything else. I still love the colors, I still love both of my wedding gowns (although, I’m certain that my post-baby boobs won’t rock my JCrew wedding gown again). I love what my bridesmaids and the dudes wore. I love that we had an American ceremony and a Chinese banquet; allowing lots of our American friends and family to try Chinese banquet food for the first time. I love that we got to share the day with so many friends and family; many of whom had flown in from different states and different countries.

If you were getting married again, would you do anything differently?

Last year we did do more celebrating than usual for our 10th anniversary. We spent a weekend in Las Vegas and renewed our wedding vows at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Elvis himself preformed the ceremony. It was cheesy and silly, but also lots of fun. You can see the invitation I created for the little event here. After the short ceremony (that included a few songs sung by Elvis), we all had dinner at The Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. We only had a few friends there, but it was seriously so much fun. It’s so rare for my husband and me to do something that’s just for us.

Photo by Cari Hollis

Any ideas on what we should do for our 20th anniversary?? Our boys will be 17 and 13 (oh geez, that’s terrifying to consider). By then maybe we can leave them home without a babysitter, right??

Ethan's 1st Birthday

When Ethan turned one, his mommy Jessica wanted to do a fun woodland theme for his party. The invitation I created had a faux wood grain background and some pretty cute animals if I do say so myself. Check it out!

The little orange fox is my favorite!