Ladies and Gentlemen...we have a Guestbook!!

As you may (or may not) remember, I recently designed and ordered my guest book from Picaboo. I had a 50% off coupon code, so last week I decided to go for it and place the order... all in all with shipping I paid $23.99 for this bad boy!! Now that is a deal. Almost Mama T worthy! (if you are a member of my family, you know what I'm talking about. If not...Mama T is my grandma, and nobody - I mean nobody - can find a bargain like Mama T can!)

Well yesterday evening we had a knock on the door, and it was the UPS man, WITH OUR GUESTBOOK! I can't believe it arrived this fast, I just got the email saying it shipped like 2 days ago. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the actual book, but here is a sneak peek of the cover taken from the Picaboo Website:

I'd give you the link to look through the whole thing...but that ruins all the fun for those of you who are actually coming to the wedding! Gotta keep some things a surprise...I'll tell you this much - it's not your typical guestbook. Instead of boring blank pages with lines for everyone to sign their names, it is full of pictures of Matt and I (from when we were little up until our Engagement Pictures) and there is space around the pictures for everyone to sign and write us a message. This way, after the wedding we have an awesome keepsake! But you'll just have to come to the wedding to see the real thing ;)

How do I look?

You may or may not have noticed...but the blog has had a makeover recently! What do you think? I've been a *little* bored at work the last two days, and instead of working on my to-do list (one of the new additions to the blog...) I've been schnazzing up the blog. I know, I'm so productive aren't I. Well...hope you like it! Maybe I should actually do some work now...

VistaPrint ROCKS!

Ever since we got engaged (which, yes, I know, was an entire 6 MONTHS ago) I have been looking forward to sending Save the Date magnets out. Just because our engagement will be so long (just over a year) and I want to spread the good news about our wedding as soon as possible! Well, it has taken me FOREVER to actually get this Save the Date process going. First we had to take our engagement pictures and get the copyrighted CD (yes, I realize that was like 2 months ago...) and then I had to pick out which ones I wanted (you know me and decisions...) I orginally picked some out from Magnet Street, but was hesitating because of the price.

Well...then I discovered this wonderful thing called VistaPrint (and I have the Realies to thank for that!) Holy cow, if you haven't been to their website before, stop now and click on the link. You will be AMAZED. They have so much FREE stuff!!!!! And even the stuff that's not free is amazingly CHEAP!!!! So, they have a deal where you can get 10 magnets FREE - just pay shipping - and you can design your own and upload the design (for a small fee), or use one of their templates. Well, I have this wonderful $20 version of Photo Shop at home, and I thought I'd put it to some good use and see if I couldn't design my own Save the Date (ok, by design my own I mean copy the design I liked from the Magnet Street catalog...)

I ordered the 10 Free ones from VP, just to see what they looked like (I just couldn't commit to ordering the entire 100 of them...) and they came in yesterday!! I was going to post a picture, but I don't want to spoil the fun for those of you who will receive them in the mail!! Also, they aren't exactly what I wanted YET. I still need to tweak them a little before placing the final order.

I'll probably give in and post a picture when I get the final ones in :) But I just had to share my excitement. And enlighten everyone to VistaPrint!! Seriously, if you haven't checked it out...DO IT!!!!!!! You won't regret it! And sign up with your email address. You'll get an email just about every day, but it's totally worth it because the emails are full of FREE STUFF!! I have ordered all kinds of free stuff for Matt's "company", my Christmas cards, and I think I've *almost* convinced myself to design my own invitations! :o

Engagement Pics are on the wall!!

We had our Engagement photos taken by the amazing Josh Solar back in September. (click here to see my post about how awesome they were...) We went for an ordering session a few weeks later, and after looking at each picture a few hundred times I decided on 5, which we ordered with plans to mat and frame to hang in the living room. Well the pictures came in a couple months ago, but it took us a while to actually go get the frames (partially because I knew how expensive they were going to be, and was waiting for birthday gift cards to Hobby Lobby... :) We got them ordered a couple weeks ago (which let me tell you was another tough decision...who knew there were 100 different colors of mat board to choose from???) and went to pick them up this weekend. Yesterday, Matt got them all hung up, and they look GREAT! Even though I had a layout in mind when we ordered them, I still spent a good hour trying to decide how I wanted them on the wall. I had paper cut-outs that were the size of the frames and everything...testing the different ideas out on the wall. Well go figure, we ended up using the exact layout that I started with, so I did all that work for nothing. :) Oh well, they still look awesome!! And now for some pics...

I'll start with the zoomed out view, so you can get the "full effect" of how it looks in the living room.
A little closer...

And finally...a couple of close up shots.

I also received my free photo book from Snapfish in the mail today...I used every single one of our e-pics (yep, all 66 of them) in the album. I was originally going to print a 4x6 of each one and put them in a photo album, kind of like a proof album, but when I found out Snapfish was offering a free photo book deal, I figured I'd do that instead! It turned out pretty nice...especially since it was FREE (ok, not totally free, I still had to pay for the shipping, but close enough!)

Click here to see a preview.