A Year in Review

So, today is December 30th 2015 - aka New Year's Eve-Eve, which means 2015 is almost over. It is also special for one other reason. Today also marks 10 years of togetherness with Sam! 10 years ago today he asked me, "Do you wanna like, be my girlfriend?" and I responded, "Sure!" Best decision I ever made. Sam is my best friend and my rock and I can't imagine life without him. Even though these "anniversaries" don't count now that we're married, I'm going to say it anyway - Here's to the next 10! <3

2015 has been a great year overall, of course there are always things that happen that just plain suck, but let's just stick to the positives. This year: Sam got a new job that he LOVES, where he can use his creativity and skills and I'm so super duper happy for him. In addition to that, we had a jam packed summer of visiting friends and family, traveled to Cape Cod, we had breakfast with Marc Maron, bought an iMac, bought a house, went to our 10 year high school reunion, saw lots of live music, met lots of new babies, wait - did I really say bought a house?!

That's right. I did and I still can't believe it. Last year, I wrote a list of things to accomplish in 2015 - here is a refresher:

1. Get better at blogging!!!!! I'm not afraid to admit that sometimes, I just don't know what to write about. Other times, it gets put on the back burner and by the time I go to write a post the topic is no longer relevant. No joke. I still have written on my "to do" list to blog about my camping trip from JULY. Sorry, friends.....guess you'll have to wait for next year's camping trip.

2. Create more designs! This is a give in. There will always be another design to make. My sketchbook is filled with ideas that are just waiting to come to life. 

3. One goal that I'm so, so hopeful to obtain is to reach 100 sales by my first Etsyversary. This is a goal I set when I first opened my shop and it remains. My Etsyversary is April 29th and as of today, I'm at 60 sales. 40 more to go...eek! I still think this is obtainable, but I'm beginning to have my   
doubts.

4. SAVE SAVE SAVE!!!!! Sam and I have been saving to buy a house for years and years. With the mountain of student loan debt we have between the two of us, and things popping up like car repairs and weddings, and amazing trips to California, this is no easy feat. We have decided to really get serious this time (like we haven't said that before) and try to cut back on frivolous spending and just save. Anyone that knows us, knows that we aren't really frivolous spenders to begin with, I freaking LOVE a good bargain, but there is always room for improvement.

5. Did I mention that my 10 year high school reunion is this summer? Maybe I'll finally get those Carrie Underwood legs or maybe improve my volleyball skills, or do something cool like invent something like Romy and Michelle did before their high school reunion. 

6. Read more books! I love to read, but usually I'll read one book as fast as I can and then go weeks before reading the next one. It'd be nice to be a bit more consistent and read a little at a time, all the time, like normal humans do. Also, it'd be nice to up my Jeopardy game a bit.

I thought when I wrote this list that I was overreaching, but turns out that I wasn't at all. Okay, so I didn't read as many books as I wanted or write as many blog posts as I wanted (we all know that) and I will always want to add more designs to the shop. With that said, I did create new designs, I did read some books, and I did get some blog posts out - these are things I'll always want to be better at. Also, it turns out my volleyball skills aren't too bad either because I definitely wasn't the worst one at our reunion. I'll consider that a success. Big things are, I did reach my goal of 100 orders, which is huge for me, and we were able to save enough to buy our first house!

Speaking of the house, in my last post I mentioned how crazy it has been lately...with the actual process of buying a house, then closing on it, packing up the apartment we've lived in for 6 years, then moving and unpacking, in addition to the holiday madness, working full-time, working on orders, and being a cat mom of two. The house is still kind of a mess. Most of our clothes are in garbage bags, while we have been trying to find a new dresser set. Needless to say I've rocked some interesting outfits the past week or two that may or may not have been clean. The to-do list is never ending, but I'm sure it will always be. The important part is that it's OUR house and we're in it together and it's just an amazing thing. Cheers to that!
Now, over the next couple of days I'll work on a new potentially unobtainable list for 2016 and seriously put my clothes away.

Talk to you soon!

-- Alison --

We bought a house!

It's me again, your long lost friend who's not really great about keeping up with this blog. At least I kind of have an excuse. The past several months, Sam and I have been house hunting. We weren't planning on buying anything until the spring because who wants to move in the winter? Well, turns out....we do!

Our realtor found us the perfect little house chocked full of charm and character and wait for it..... a wood burning fireplace! We fell in love with it and decided to jump on it. The holidays are stressful and busy enough, adding the process of buying our first house, working full-time, celebrating birthdays, Thanksgiving, packing, and moving has been interesting. Good news is, it's almost over! Closing day is Thursday and then we can move in and get settled-ish in time for Christmas. Cross your fingers this freakishly warm weather hangs in there through the weekend and we don't get a giant blizzard.

This might also be a good time to share that I most likely won't be baking any Christmas cookies. I hope I'm still invited to Christmas.

So, not that it hasn't been quiet already...the next few weeks will continue to be while we get unpacked and settled in. It's been tough to try and come up with new designs with all of this stuff going on, so I'm excited to get back to the grind once we are moved in.

The house is pretty much move-in ready, but there are a few projects I have in mind to put our touch on it. I plan to post some before and after shots, but that will all depend on how our good our diy skills end up being...ha!

So, stay tuned!

-- Alison --

Hotel Welcome Bag

Have I mentioned how much I love what I do lately? No? Yes? Well guess what, I'm gonna say it again. This job rocks.

A lovely bride ordered her wedding invitations from me recently (these ones!) and then asked if I could make some matching items to put in a hotel welcome bag for her guests. I'm not sure if you've seen this idea on Pinterest, but I LOVE the idea. Actually, I love the idea so much that it's something I did at my wedding. :) Our guests were so happy to have a few little snacks and drinks waiting in their rooms for them when they checked in (and also when they returned to their rooms after hitting the open bar). They were also super fun to put together.

If you Google or Pinterest "hotel welcome bag" or something similar, one million different versions of this will pop up. I was going to link the pin I used as a go-by, but it appears to be broken, so here is the photo from the pin.

When we put ours together, we used simple kraft paper bags with a baggage tag that said something witty, I'm sure, to match our "vintage hotel" theme. Inside there were: two water bottles, an apple, assorted bags of chips, a bag of candy, a couple of homemade cookies (if you know our family, you know this was a must have), and that's all I can remember right now. They were a huge hit!

The awesome bride that is making these for her guests is really going all out. She asked me to design custom water bottle labels, custom stickers to put on the packages, a cute little welcome note, and - my favorite - a caricature drawing of her and her fiancé to stick on the outside of the bag. I'm so excited for how they all came out and think they will be a great addition to her welcome bags!

Water Bottle Label

Welcome Note

Stickers

And....Drumroll..

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Caricature Sticker for Outside of Bag

So, if you're planning a wedding and there's a hotel involved - keep this idea in mind! It's a small little detail that your guests will truly appreciate and you can have a blasty blast putting it together.

-- Alison --

Do the thing.

It's really amazing how quickly time passes. It's almost the end of August, which makes me really sad because this was the fastest summer ever and there was so much that I wanted to do that I didn't. However...fall is pretty sweet, so I'm kind of looking forward to it. Pumpkin everything is almost upon us.

Since my last post, a lot has happened. Sam and I have continued to live as movers and shakers and have had plans nearly every single weekend. Sam also got a new job, which has been a long time coming and he couldn't deserve it more. I've managed to squeak out one new wedding invitation design which you can find here, which is less than what I was hoping for, but I'm super happy with how it came out so at least there's that!

More recently, things have happened that have really rocked my world. I've lost a dear friend, one of my oldest and first friends. Over the past few years, we hadn't seen each other much, but had always remained in contact and when we saw each other it was as if no time had passed. We were still little kids dressed up as princesses waving to cars in her front yard or in high school writing in each other's yearbooks about being bffs 4lyf and then falling apart and then regaining our friendship, and then going to college together and seeing each other nearly every weekend at house parties and just laughing our asses off. There will never be anyone else like her. She was truly unique. She was so full of life and not afraid of anything.

The shock of her passing has really got me thinking about things. Life is so freaking short and if you want to make something happen, do it. Or at the very least try your freaking hardest. So, with that said. I really want to put everything I have into The Invitation Oven. This little shop is my dream. It's more than a job, it's something that I'm passionate about and would LOVE to do all day every day. It's knowing that every order I process is a little piece of paper announcing someone's special day and spreading that joy with their friends and families and random people they have to invite because that's how it goes. It's so special and intimate to be involved in these milestone events and I love every second of it.

With that in mind, I'd like to say thank you to my friend. Thank you for showing me how fragile life is and how you should make your time here matter.

So, dear reader, whatever your thing is...do it!

Here's to making things happen!

-- Alison --

Lately. June Edition.

So, turns out it's June 26th, which means...June is almost over and I haven't written a single blog post this month! Time to change that.

June has been freaking crazy. Actually, we have been running around pretty much non-stop since Memorial Day weekend. I kind of made a mistake this winter, while I was cooped up inside going stir-crazy - I sort of planned a lot of summer activities. We have been all over the place this month, which means we have spent little time at home. Which is good. It's important to get out there and do things! But... the sweatpants-wearing, Netflix-watching, chip-eating part of me misses the couch a bit. Good news is, the next couple of weeks are pretty wide open and there will be lots of time for that, as well as hopefully creating some new designs.

So. Want to know what we've been up to this month?

Here's a run down:

The first weekend of June, we were supposed to go on a long weekend boat trip with my bro, Dave. Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to sail out...one of the engines stopped working and it was going to be a week before it could get fixed. So, after stewing over what to do for a couple of hours we decided that we'd head to Cape Cod. None of us had ever been there, so we went for it. Good decision.

We took our time driving out there, we stopped at a bunch of little towns along the way until we made it to our final destination of Provincetown. What a lovely place. I love the houses there and all of the gardens. Every single house has shaker shingles and rhododendrons, and they are all so cute and quaint. We spent a lot of time walking down the main drag, going into some cute (and....just...weird) shops. We flew kites on the beach, ate lobster rolls, raw oysters, clams. We went to a karaoke bar that had a drag queen DJ. We climbed to the top of the Pilgrim Monument (which is 252 ft, by the way). This is where I realized that I'm much more afraid of heights than I originally thought. Oops. Shortly after we did this we headed over to the Breakwater Walkway, which I had noticed on the drive into town. It's this walkway that stretched across the bay over to this beachy area with two light houses on it. We got there and began walking... from the road it looked pretty easy. It looked rocky, but flat, and it didn't really look that far. We began walking - in flip flops and no water. I was wearing skinny jeans. We quickly learned that this may have been a mistake. The walkway was made up of giant rocks that weren't completely touching, so there were big gaps in between that we had to jump over. There was climbing and careful footwork, and just a lot more nimble cat-like moves than we had planned on. Oh, and also - we learned that it was 1.5 miles.. one way. We made it across. Thirsty and tired, but we were happy that we made it. We trudged around the beaches there for a while and took in some of the sights. We hadn't noticed how lovely it was on the walk over since we had to look down the whole time. It was a beautiful, sunny day. There were two light houses, which were way farther away than we thought - so we admired them from a distance. After spending a while there, we decided to head back. That's when someone said to us "Hey, did you guys notice all of this poison ivy?" We had not, but we realized that we had definitely been walking around in it the entire time. This really just reminded us of how unprepared we were for this adventure and that we had to walk back across those rocks another 1.5 miles. Even though it wasn't rainbows and butterflies the whole time, I would do it again. Mental note: next time - wear sneakers, shorts, and bring a freaking drink.

Okay, I guess I wanted to tell you more about our Cape Cod trip that I knew before I started writing. Here is a quick rundown of the other things:

- Memorial Day weekend we spent in Cambridge, MA visiting friends from college. They took us to Harvard Square, where we ate a ton of awesome food, went to a record shop, explored the stunning Harvard campus. We went into Boston for a bit for dinner and a had quick walk through the Boston Public Garden. My favorite activity was kayaking down the St. Charles River. That was so fun. I have done plenty of kayaking, but never any "urban kayaking." 

- My aunt Paula (Paula Who?) did stand up at a comedy show at the Kallet Theater in Oneida. She was so great. She was by FAR the best one that performed that night. The whole place was cracking up. Plus, she ended with a McAllister dance party. Who doesn't love that?

- We saw Mike Gordon at the Papermill Island, which is like.... RIGHT down the street from our house. Mike gave Sam and I high fives. No big deal. The show was great. They had touch screen pads at the front of the stage that lit up during a couple songs and you could play along. They also had LED guitars.

- The day after the concert, we headed to Doylestown, PA to visit our other friends from college. We spent that Saturday tubing down the Delaware River, being all like George Washington. We each blew up our tube. (Just kidding. Sam pretty much blew up everyone's tube.) They also had a floating cooler! We put that in the center and tied up to it, so we were one big floating party. It was so fun. If you have never been tubing - do it!!!! It's so, so fun. All you need are two cars, tubes, and a few hours to do nothing, but relax.

- And, lastly, just this week we went to see Todd Snyder at the Westcott in Syracuse. He had an opener, John Craigie who was SO GOOD. I loved him. His stories and songs were hilarious and he was super talented to boot. Todd, of course, was great. I don't know a ton of his songs, but Sam knew every single one. I had never been to a concert like that. It wasn't really the type of music to dance to (which is a relief for me). It was so casual, everyone sat down and just listened to his words and appreciated his talent. Definitely go see him!

So. Here we are now. It's been a crazy past few weeks. I'm ready to do nothing this weekend and all of this travel has given me a ton of inspiration for some new designs. Stay tuned for those! :)

What have you been up to so far this summer? What are you looking forward to doing that you haven't done yet? Let me know in the comments!


-- Alison --

High School Reunion

What a crazy month this has been! The shop is busier than ever and I'm loving every second of it. While I have it on my mind, I'm going to tell you about a cool project that I was working on a few posts ago, but couldn't elaborate on. 

Well, guess what - now I can!

This summer is going to be my 10 year high school reunion. How time flies. I'm definitely more anxious than excited at this point, but the planning committee has done a freaking awesome job organizing it. There is going to be a band, a photo booth, drinks, food, games, and beer! (Thank God.) Maybe I'll actually write about it in my blog after and tell you how it goes, or maybe I'll have it on the "to do" list and it will be our 20 year reunion before I get around to posting it. You know how good I am at posting regularly! ha

Anyway. The planning committee approached me about designing the invitations for the reunion. OF COURSE I said yes! I was honored and excited to take on this project and I think they came out pretty great, but am still not totally believing that this is a real thing. Right? Didn't we just graduate?

As for the design, I thought maybe I could incorporate the school mascot but remembered our school was stripped of it’s mascot when we were seniors (we used to be the Oneida Indians) and I don’t think it was ever replaced with anything. So, we are now the Oneida Nothings. So, to keep it “school spirity” I just used our colors – orange and blue – and went for a simple, yet fun design. I even got to throw in a witty one-liner, so was real happy about that.

We had originally decided on a 5x7” invitation with a separate 4x6” RSVP card, but then decided to do something a little more efficient. We ended up with one piece that could be folded up and mailed out, no envelopes necessary. (Thank you to Michele for doing the folding, addressing, taping, and mailing!) The invitation was the top half and the RSVP was a postcard on the bottom half, separated by a perforated line. All that guests will have to do is tear off the RSVP, stick a stamp on it and mail it back. Which reminds me… I should probably mail ours in. Oops. 

These were kind of difficult to photograph, since they are such a unique layout, but they give you an idea at least. Nadine's address was also blurred out for her privacy. I know all of you readers wanted to mail her flowers for doing all this hard work, but you will have to find another way.

-- Alison --

The Invitation Oven turns ONE!

Today is a freaking awesome day. Here's a run down:

1. I went to the dentist. Why is this a good thing, you ask? Because I'm a freak and I enjoy going to the dentist. Mostly because I'm 27 years old and have never had a cavity (okay, in my adult teeth.. baby teeth is another story). Every time I go to the dentist and he says "you have lovely teeth, see you in 6 months" it amazes me. My luck will end someday, but for now I will enjoy my cavity free ride.

2. After the dentist, I treated myself to Dunkin Donuts. Ordering anything from Dunkin Donuts is a gamble because they NEVER EVER get your order right. It doesn't matter what you order or which Dunkin Donuts it is, either. One time Sam ordered a bagel with "half the amount of cream cheese you normally put on." What did they give him? A bagel with cream cheese on half of it. I'm talking like a half moon cookie. My other favorite is ordering a "large coffee and a medium coffee" and getting one extra large coffee and two mediums. Anyway. Today, I got my bagel with cream cheese and my coffee (don't tell my dentist) and it was perfect.

3. I actually like my outfit today. Lately, I'm on a maxi dress / skirt kick. This is kind of unfortunate because I'm short and it's hard to find one that isn't meant for a 7 foot tall woman. Maxi skirts are an illusion. They make it look like you tried to look nice, but you actually feel like you are wrapped in a blanket. Might I say that they trump sweatpants??? Because you know, they aren't pants! Nobody likes pants.

4. During my lunch break, I went to the park and ran 2 miles. This makes me super happy because I got to be outside on this gorgeous 69°F day with bright blue skies and sunshine. It also makes me happy because I haven't been able to run at all the past two weeks because of having bronchitis. Man, it feels good to be able to breathe again!

5. All of these things are amazing on their own, but the main reason why today is so wonderful is that it's my first Etsyversary!!!!!!!!!

The Invitation Oven is now 1!

Ah! I'm such a proud mom. This year has been such a learning experience for me and I have loved every second of it. I love being a part of the Etsy community and working with the most creative and amazing customers. And..... as I've mentioned to you, when I opened my shop I made the ambitious goal of 100 sales by my first Etsyversary.  WELL, not only have I met this goal, I exceeded it! As of this second, I have 134 sales. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported my shop and listened to me blab on and on about invitations this year. I can't wait to see what this next year brings! :)

-- Alison --