Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It's happily celebrated by nearly everyone in the US. And it's a day when I get my carb fix... both in preparing them and in consuming them! Here is this year's Thanksgiving invitation and menu. I decided to combine them.

Those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, do you host or travel to someone's home for dinner? If you host, what is your favorite thing to prepare?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
xo
Patti

Thanksgiving's Almost Here!

My family does a great job of splitting up the holiday hosting duties. I happily host Thanksgiving every year. It's my favorite holiday! I've put together a couple of inspiration photos (found on Pinterest) along with the invitation I sent out and this year's menu. I'd love to hear about your Thanksgiving plans. Feel free to share in the comments.
Happy Thanksgiving, friends!
xoxo
-Patti

The Bar Mitzvah Invitations Are Mailed!

As many of you know, I've been designing my son's Bar Mitzvah invitations for a while. I've asked several of my fellow stationery friends and the census seems to hold true for all of them: Designing for your own event is significantly more difficult than designing for someone else's event! It seemed to take me a really, really long time to pull all this together, but I'm thrilled with the outcome.

When starting the process of designing the invitation suite, I consulted the Bar Mitzvah boy himself. After discussing possible color combinations we decided on colors found on a walk in the forest. Jacob loves to hike and mountain bike. He's also very environmentally conscious, so a "theme" centering around nature is fitting. So without further adieu  I give you Jacob's forest inspired Bar Mitzvah invitation suite.

The suite features shades of mossy greens and charcoal. I hand drew Jacob's Hebrew name. Jacob told me that it is his favorite part of the entire set. Included in the square envelope is the invitation which is backed with a 120 lb. onyx pearly cardstock, the reply card with stamped envelope, directions to the synagogue and "after party" invitations individually addressed to each of Jacob's friends.

The thank-you card for after the event.

Stay tuned for photos of the party! And keep your fingers crossed for lovely weather, please.

(almost) Annual Halloween Party

We moved into our current home about 10 years ago.  It was January 31 and the day was a typical cold and snowy New England Winter's day.  I had a two-year-old as well as a newborn and I knew no one in our tree lined neighborhood.  It took a good six months to really start to mingle with the neighbors, but during those six months I discovered we'd moved onto a street that had several small children and babies!  When October rolled around I decided to host a neighborhood Halloween party!  We've thrown a bash of some sort or another nearly every year since.  Occasionally we've skipped a year here and there, but basically we do our best to host something for the neighborhood kids and grown-ups.  We missed last year, so this year we're trying to make up for loss time.  Here is the invitation I designed for the big night!

Here are some photos of Halloween past...

one year hubs and I went as "Super Hero" sandwiches
(made with "Wunder Bread")

homemade skeleton costume
(white vinyl table cloth material was my friend!)

over the kitchen table

mad scientist... and the candy cabinet (if you dare!)

specimen and candles... and a few spiders

our "haunted" house

What sort of fun things will you be doing this year for Halloween?  Let me know in the comments!

Inspiration from the Garden

I recently entered a design contest hosted by Invitation Buzz. Invitation Consultants sponsored the "You Choose the Event" contest and I happened to have won! My inspiration for the winning design: Pink & Orange found in the garden.

Below, you can see the winning invitation as well as two more designs that were inspired by this summer's hottest color combination!