Updates

So life is continuing here at a relatively normal pace. Although things are still a little up and down with the issues here in Japan, and concern from members back home. But all in all life is normal.

So it was back to folding paper cranes again! By tonight I will have folded 400 cranes! Yea! That's like 1/5, 4/10, or 40% done! Woot! I'm really excited! I wasn't folding them for a long time because we were busy with the English Musical over here (click to see the final fight scene). So basically life in general was on hold.

But I have completed about half of the name cards as well. Been busy stamping the names of people who I KNOW or at least strongly hope will come. People who we are iffy about, or the plus ones I will do later.

Been thinking about the invitations... I have no idea what time to make the ceremony. Both Mike and I are a little stumped about what time exactly to make things. How long do things take? How much time should we allot for pictures, and receiving line, and everything else? What should we do with the guests in between it all? Anyway things we need to iron out but nothing that has to be done ASAP, got some time before the invitations need to go out.

Otherwise things are moving along but need to make decisions about portable washrooms and things. Which brings me back to the previous point in other posts, you slap 'Wedding' into the name of a thing and it JUMPS in price. This is a proven fact of life, and I would like to point out that NO service or good is immune to this idea, portable washrooms included!

Just food for thought.

Tragedy and Inspiration

As many of you know by now, if you are anywhere near a radio, TV, or the internet, Japan has been devastated by an 8.9 earthquake and the ensuing Tsunami that followed.

While Mike and I, and all our personal friends, as safe and unharmed by events, you can’t help but feel terrible about the devastation which has followed in the wake. Flooding, fires, homes and live just swept away.

So while there is very little that we can actual ‘do’ to help the situation there is always fundraising and donating as a means to help. Of course Mike and I want to give money to help, and we can give a certain amount, but on a wedding budget it is not the easiest thing in the world. This was when we had a wonderful revelation.

We had always planned on making a donation to a charity instead of guest favours. We had many reasons for this, but the main reason was that on weddings you spend a lot of money on food and decorations for yourself and the guests already, so why not give to something else entirely? I like to think that the guests feel better knowing that they had a good time and some good was done, rather than having take home some sort of well-intentioned, but probably less-than-useful gift.

Having already decided that we were going to give money to a charity, but having not decided which one yet, has give Mike and I a great opportunity. Not only can we give the original amount that we planned, but also give the amount which we had budgeted into the wedding as well .

So while it isn’t much, considering the vastness of the need and the rebuilding to come, Mike and I feel slightly better knowing that a part of our big day was used to give back to the country we have called home for nearly 2 years.

So a Donation will be made to the Red Cross Japan Relief fund both from Mike and I, and on behalf of all our wonderful guests who will be with us on that day, and even those who we know will be far away as well.

Thank you Japan for all the experiences we’ve had, and I hope this helps a little.

Make Work Details

Ok so anyone who knows me knows that if I’m upset or frustrated I like to do something productive to feel like I am accomplishing something. Ask my old roommates and they will tell you I would clean the kitchen or something when I was upset. Ask Mike and he’ll inform you of my MANY cleaning, crafting, sewing, painting, or folding projects. I don’t know why I just find it therapeutic to look at something and say ‘Well at least the kitchen is clean’ or ‘I finished sewing a whole pirate sail in one night!’

So with my continued irritation with work, and just being super busy with life, I decided to take on another challenge pertaining to the wedding. Yeppers, I am doing another part of the wedding by hand!

So the ‘Save the Date’ cards that we sent out were post cards with the details of the date and our picture on the front (the ever familiar one that our friend Andrew took this past summer).

The back of the postcard had the addresses on them and a brief description of the rabbit theme.

In Japan 2011 is the year of the Rabbit. For us it represents a piece of our past experiences, as well as the year Christine was born. It is also a symbol of our mutual love of the outdoors and was a favoured pet of Mike’s childhood.

Happy New Year and we hope to see you on September 3^rd, 2011.

This one is a mistake one, and I hid the address.

Here we stamped a pair of rabbits and embosses them with a powder that you heat and it melts and dries into a raised edge.

We plan on using this same style, plus more stamps, for the invitations. However we need to work out some more details before we can make the invitations. You need to print out the cards first before you can stamp and emboss. So until we determine times and other details the invitations will have to wait a bit longer.

But I, being slightly unhappy with the current events in my life, decided I needed to do something right now other than the monotonous folding of the cranes (which I can now do without thinking). SO I had stumbled upon some more stamps at one of the stores in Tokushima, and it not being a craft store the stamps were on the cheap side. They were alphabet stamps which got me thinking about spelling people’s names on the invitations. But the invitations will already have 5 or 6 stamps so I decided that would be too much.

I got thinking though, where could I use these stamps? Then I thought about name cards for seats and things. Perfect! My mind got busy with ideas and this is what I came up with because I had already bought the paper-punch of the crane and the cherry blossom.

Just some dollar store construction paper and the lending of my school's paper cutter and this is what I accomplished in one night! I cut out about 160 pieces of orange or purple paper to be the base of the name cards. Then I also added a fold line with a fancy 'fold setting' of the paper cutter. So now they all sit waiting to be glued to.

The other part of the paper is about 140 smaller piece of paper that I will do the stamping onto. They are purple or orange as well. However I punched out either cheery blossoms of a crane silhouette into each of the two colours, thus making 4 different styles of the smaller card.

After that it's a matter of stamping on names and gluing the smaller paper to the opposite colour (ie orange onto purple or purple onto orange) so that the paper cutout stands out!

One of the things I have to decided is which colour of ink I should use. I have experimented with both silver and black ink on both orange and purple paper. The silver turns up better on the orange paper, but poorly on the purple paper. So I guess I'll have to use black in... but I thought that was kind of boring. Oh well, you can't win them all.

So now that I have all this paper cut (I did it in one night because I need to return the paper cutter to work ASAP tomorrow), I can go about carefully stamping the names of people that I KNOW are coming, and I can wait on stamping the rest. However this does mean I will have to pay CLOSE attention to spelling (SUCH a weak point for me T_T). I know I'm going to screw it up! That's why I made well over 100 pieces of paper, and 100 people is the top number of guest possible.

Also on the plus side the paper punching gives me these cute little paper cut outs. I'm not sure what to do with them, maybe I'll use them as annoying confetti that falls out of the invitations...? No probably not. Oh well I'll find a use for them!

Yep so that was my night tonight. I stayed up WAY to late doing it, but it felt so good to be on a roll!

I know it's not needed, and that it's extra, but I feel like there is so little I can actually 'do' on the wedding right now because I'm so far away or I'm waiting for other things to be decided and things. Plus I always thought cute little touches to things were awesome! Little bits here and there I love! At my friend Jen's wedding she drew adorable cartoons for each table number and on just about everything else! At one of Mike's cousin's wedding they had hand written each persons name on a two layer paper flower cut out with the table number on the back. I just want those little things, but I want them on the cheap. So this is how I'm doing them.

What do you think? Is it too much?