2 kids from jersey

We officially have the best friends and family ever. Operation Invitation was a complete and total success this weekend. 168 complete invitations are currently sitting on the long table in my parent’s house. They look amazing. Each one is a hand crafted work of art made with love and no 2 are the same. How cool is that?!

A HUGE (huge, huge, huge) thank you to Erin, Lily, Jaimie, Aunt Carole, Katie, Sam, Skippy, Michael, Pop, Aunt Sarah, Grammy, Pop-Pop, and our Mom’s and Dad’s!! We honestly could not have done this without you. I was always told “many hands make light work.” It might not have been light or easy but, with 18 people, we got it done faster than I could have hoped for. I’m still stunned that we finished assembling ALL of the pieces Saturday. Everything was beaded and wrapped, glued or taped and embossed before the end of SNL. It was a long but incredibly productive day.

By the end we were getting a little punchy and I’m relatively certain a significant number of our volunteers would prefer to never see copper wire ever again. But each piece came out beautifully and everyone did such a fantastic job. We appreciate the time and energy that you gave this weekend. You are all so talented and generous. We are feeling very loved!!

All of the pocketfolds are assembled. The envelopes should be arriving Wednesday. We will be printing the addresses directly on the envelopes because Rob and I have awful handwriting. Hope no one minds. Besides, the font will match the rest of the invite and I think it looks classy. Printing and stuffing envelopes will happen in 2 weekends (27th & 28th). We could have done it all this weekend but were just looking for another excuse for a party. Also, the 26th is Mom’s birthday. If you’d like to come help stuff and seal, we’d love to have you! Since all the hard work was done this weekend, it should be relatively painless.

Thank you again, to our amazing friends and family. It was so much fun to hang out and create art with you. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We love you!!

If you buy one of those gel cling things, DON’T put it on paint!!! The package says it’s for glass and mirror but should read that it is only for those surfaces. We had it on our door for about a week and it has absolutely 100% stained our door. It’s kind of faint but still totally readable. Ooops!

Oh – and we decorated our door last week.

is shaping up to be very busy.

Tonight we’re going to see Bruce Springsteen! He’s playing down in Philly and we’ve got tickets. I remember buy these tickets and thinking that Oct. 5th was awfully far away. Not anymore! Rob’s pretty excited about the play-list. Apparently, he’s playing Born to Run every show. Fingers crossed he plays it tonight!

Tomorrow is Andy & Laura’s wedding! Andy and Rob were in the RU Glee Club together and we’re very excited for them. Congrats guys!!

Sunday, Oct. 7th is my Dad’s b-day.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!! We love you!

October is invitation month and we are cruising along. I’ve printed out all of the Response Cards and Fish Lake Friday invites. I was going to print out the actual invitation part too but it just wasn’t coming out right. The linen text-weight paper printed fine but the linen card-stock didn’t look as nice. The letters weren’t crisp, like they should be. Everything looks slightly fuzzy from where the ink bled into the paper.

One of the nice parts about living in a city is the convenience of having vendors right on your doorstep. MinuteMan press is right on Commerce St., only a block away. I dropped the invites off there and they’ll print it using thermography. Hopefully that will be done today or Monday. The only thing left to print is our invite tags. I think I like them best printed from my parents printer. They come out slightly fuzzy on mine but the toner from a professional laser printer doesn’t look right either. Hopefully we’ll print them out Sunday.

SirSpeedy is cutting all of our paper down to size for free! We use them a ton for work and Sherri said we could just bring it by. I took half of it over yesterday and they had it done same day. It looks perfect and professional. I’ll take the invites, Fish Lake Friday invites and invite tags over sometime next week.

Next Saturday, the 13th, is Operation: Invitation. We will be combining 2,100 pieces of paper, 2,250 beeds and 17,625″ of copper wire into 150 custom invitations. They’re going to look amazing! Of course, we are enlisting the help of our friends and family to glue, wrap and assemble starting at 10am. If you can come and haven’t gotten the evite, please let us know. We’d love to see you!

My name is Carrie and I have been living with CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome). I realized this Tuesday when Rob’s dad brought our “I forgots” up from SJ. Of course I loved seeing him but inside I was horrified to let him in the apartment. You would have thought teenagers lived here. Clothes were strewn about and dirty dishes dotted the horizontal surfaces.

I remembered this FlyLady thing my Mom does. I’d always thought that advice was only really meant for people with real houses, children and minivans. But really it’s all about establishing little routines that make cleaning automatic. The very first step is shining your sink. It’s one tiny little baby step towards keeping the housework run smoothly. Tuesday evening, I shined my sink for the very first time. Since then, I’ve done the 27 Thing Fling and given away a whole bag of stuff to GoodWill. I cleaned out the drawer on my bedside table (I haven’t opened them since leaving New Brunswick). I’m working on doing the laundry one load a day, so it doesn’t all pile up and take over. The sink is still shiny. If you check out their website (http://www.flylady.net), you’ll figure out what I’m talking about. Rob thinks I’ve gone a little nuts but the house is looking much better! We may even be able to find some Halloween decorations.

Come on over! If we can keep this up (which we will) visitors can pop by anytime they like.