Wedding Invites and Throwing Stars

I had kind of cut myself off from reading any wedding blogs a few weeks ago to keep things sane. But I cheated and peaked at Green Wedding Shoes this morning, where I found examples of some awesome new invites from Studio on Fire and someone I previously had not seen, Erin Jang.

Ms. Jang does some handsome and clever work. And her type takes my breath away (and type really can do that -- take breath away).

I like the carnival-esqueness to this, like your organist should be the bearded lady and the ring bearer the two-headed boy, bride and groom depart on elephant...

I would keep this program if I went to their wedding

This type is gasp-worthy

When I kicked off design of my own invites, I did a lot of hunting for inspiration and image loading. I was finding a lot of the same stuff out there -- birds, big blooms, everything letterpressed -- lots of pretty stuff, but not especially thoughtful, so most just blended together. Once in a while something would really blow me away, and it was more often than not from Studio on Fire.

Here are some more recent pieces:

This pattern is somewhat unexpected for a wedding invite

It's all bird-trendy, but this type is so handsome



Not a wedding invite, just cool

I need to get my act together and photograph our finished invites. I'm really happy with how they turned out. Here's a preview of the folded and packaged piece, pre-envelope stuffing:

Christmas Tree Hunt

I love this time of year for many reasons: it's cloudy, cold and snow are still a novelty, and of course there's the abundance of holiday vacation time! Rob and I were up in Wisconsin this year for Thanksgiving. As is Seidl Family tradition, we visited a tree farm the day after to get our Christmas tree.

Shaking and wrapping the tree

Um, yikes; at the nearby bar

Memorial Day on North Beach

Rob and I got back home early from a weekend at his family cabin in Northern Michigan. So we went for a walk on the Lake path down to North Beach to regain mobility after 6+ hours in the car.

It was a crazy obstacle course: us versus kids on those shoes that double as rollerskates, families with gigantic coolers carried length-wise, and the way-too-serious-for-the-Lake-path cyclists in the full spandex. Once we got to the end of the pier at North Beach, the crowd thinned out and I was taking pictures galore. Here are some favorites:

Laziness

I've been really lagging on my daily post resolution for the past week+

This is what I've been up to:

The Mike and Ikes that got away

Rob and I were in Colorado for the past few days to visit my broseph and hit the slopes. One of the days, we went to a small town called Manitou Springs. It has a motley collection of stores: antique cowboy tchotchke shops, herbal apothecaries, and emporiums full of weed-themed tshirts and those tapestries that hang in dorm rooms.

Nestled inside this cyclone of crapola was this cute little arcade with vintage games. With our combined ticket earnings, we just missed getting a box of Mike and Ikes. I blame my Dad for his poor showing on the Whack-o-Mole. Here are some pictures:

Moonlight Bay

I grew up in Wisconsin and spent a lot of time at a family friend's cabin in a small town called Baileys Harbor in Door County. This is where Robby (top image) and I will most likely get hitched.

My parents just built a cabin up there near Moonlight Bay. Here are some pictures of us snowshoeing by the bay. Just looking at these reduces my stress level.