The Gift Bags

I know in an earlier post I said that I wouldn't say anything about the gift bags because I wanted them to be a surprise. However, I just got the bags in the mail today and I can't resist showing them to you all. They turned out so well!

I wanted to find a bag that was sturdy and would last for the duration of everyone's trip, but I didn't want to have to spend $20 to get everyone a fancy tote bag. So on discountmugs.com I found these blank, thin canvas bags that are like the reusable shopping bags that you can buy at the grocery store. Then I made a little design in photoshop for them to print on the bags and it was as easy as that. I think they turned out really well and I'm excited to fill them up with goodies for all of the guests. I'm going to keep my promise and not let you know anything about what's going inside them, so enjoy this one-time gift bag sneak peak.

The Money Saving Tactics

Since Zach and I are living off of one salary and saving for a house and the wedding, we've had to employ some creative money saving techniques. We thought you'd enjoy seeing how we're managing to save money:

We always keep our thermostat off. When it gets too hot, we open the sliding door. When it gets too cold, we warm ourselves by lighting candles and using blankets.


We don't bother paying for cable each month, we just hook the computer up to the TV and watch online shows and movies.


We take extra condiments when we go out to eat and use them later so we don't have to buy them from the store.


When there's a sale at the store, we buy in bulk (that's right, we currently have nine cereal boxes).


We use office supplies to seal our food (who needs to spend money on chip clips or tupperware?).


We track all of our spending on Mint.com. Since we've been using it we've already identified over $100 in faulty charges.

We hoped you enjoyed this insight into our current lifestyle. We miss you all and hopefully we'll see you all at the wedding in October!

The New Apartment

Hey all,

It's been awhile since my last post because we kind of took a break from wedding planning after our super-productive trip to Sedona. Currently we're working on getting the gift bags together for all of the guests. We've been designing the bags and ordering cool little gifts to put inside, but I haven't been posting any pictures of those because I was them to be a surprise.

Zach and I have also been busy fixing up our new place. The apartment is gorgeous and we have some really great pieces of furniture in it. Our next step is to buy some patio furniture and curtains. I hope you enjoy these pictures of the place.

The Wedding Cake

Sorry I've been so slow in updating this, but Zach and I don't have internet at our apartment yet, so I have to wait until I can get to a place with free wireless before doing anything. Here's a little bit about the cake we are getting designed. Enjoy!

We decided to go with Donna at Sedona Sweet Arts for our wedding cake. Donna really loves making sugar art and usually makes flowers for cakes, but I think we were able to challenge her with something a little different. When we first got to the bakery we sampled some of her cakes and almost immediately decided on carrot cake (Zach's favorite) for half of the cake and then chocolate mousse (my favorite) for the other half of the cake. The carrot cake half will have cream cheese icing while the chocolate half will have a chocolate mousse filling and both will have a thin layer of buttercream on the outside for decoration.

The cake is going to be relatively simple with a tuscan finish with ivory frosting on the outsite. And the most extravagant part will be the topper, which will be a bride and groom cactus. You can probably get a better idea from the pictures below. The first one is an example of what the tuscan texture will look like, except that ours will be ivory and won't have flowers. The second picture is what the topper will look like, and Donna is going to make that part entirely out of sugar.

The Save the Dates

Save the dates are finally out! Please visit the wedding website for more travel details so you can make your bookings. October is the most popular month for weddings in Sedona, so make sure you book early because things are going to fill up.

Zach and I made the Save the Dates ourselves and had a lot of fun, so we'll definitely make the invitations by hand as well. We wanted to incorporate the destination wedding theme, so we made them look like luggage tags. We were also able to get most of the supplies from www.envelopperinc.com, which has become my new favorite website. They sell all different types of paper, cards, labels, and envelopes and then DIY people can put all of the parts together. I like it because it allows you to pick any colors you want and sizes and you can mix and match different parts. So here's a little diagram of all of the parts we used and assembled followed by pictures of the final product.

The Wedding Photographer

Zach and I have been pretty productive with the wedding this week. We finished the Save the Dates and threw those in the mail today, we are finally updating the wedding site for our guests, and we chose our wedding photographer (even though that wasn't really a difficult decision). We're going to use my former roommate, current friend and sorority sister wedding photographer Lauren Wright. She's really great and along with providing us with beautiful pictures, I know she'll make us feel really comfortable on our big day. You can check out her work here to see what I'm talking about.

We're back from Australia/New Zealand!

For those of you who didn't know, we just got back from a month-long epic vacation in Australia and New Zealand. We had a blast, but we are both so glad to be back in the United States. Below are a few pictures of our favorite moments on the trip. You can also download this file to browse through all of our pictures (Beware: the file may take awhile to download because it contains 30 days worth of pictures).

Waiting to go to the ballet at the Sydney Opera House, AU

Christmas day on Heron Island, AU

Feeding a kangaroo on Kangaroo Island, AU

Preparing for blackwater rafting at the Waitomo glowworm caves, NZ


Sitting under a tree at Abel Tasman National Park, NZ

Tuckered out after a long climb in Queenstown, NZ