Thursday, September 10, 2009

chicago

Our little vacation is almost over and well, I made a bit of a silly mistake.

I forgot to charge my Leica's battery. Gah.

So on our first lovely excursion to the downtown area I was camera-less. We went to Vogue Fabrics in Evanston. It was successful and I'll share the bounty when I get back.

Then I also forgot to stop at Michael's while tooling around my parents' area. I'm in dire need (well not really dire until December, but shush) of a corner rounder and other craftiness, but when I'm home in DC I truly hate leaving the city for the suburbs. Boo.

Normal blogging duties will resume Sunday. I hope.

Friday, September 4, 2009

martha stewart loves mood boards, too

I subscribe to a few wedding blogs, including Martha Stewart's A Bride's Guide. Yesterday I was scrolling through the posts on my Reader and came across the following board. Swoon!



Isn't it lovely? There are definitely elements here I'd like to incorporate, particularly those silhouettes. Oh I feel a DIY coming on. But the black and pink, so chic.

I will be in the Chicago area this week gathering supplies (DC is not a crafter's paradise). There will be a pilgrimage to Vogue Fabrics. And it will be amazing.


everyone loves a mood board part 3

After getting a little kick out of the flower board, I kept going with these themes.

I needed something to show my two bridesmaids ideas for their dresses (oh that sounds like a whole other post!), so I set out to make a bridesmaid dress board.

Again, the board was created using Style Me Pretty's generator.

Bridesmaids

Without going into too much detail, I'm quite taken with the look of different dresses on maids..

favorite planning resources

I'm at work so I don't have full access to my clip file (more on this later), so the mood board posts will continue soooon.

But I wanted to share the online resources that have made planning more organized and, in some cases, easier to share.

1. Google Docs

Oh Google Docs, how I love thee. At first I was just using the spreadsheets to keep track of potential vendors and their quotes, for the sake of comparison. But once I started booking vendors, I saw more potential! Sharing!

So I signed my mom up for gmail and invited her to the budget spreadsheet (she is paying for about 85% of the wedding). We can both add things, make notes, and keep track of the overall budget while living 12 hours away. Perfecto.

2. Mint.com

Ah, another money application. This isn't so wedding-related, but it is supremely valuable.You input all of your banking information (the more you supply, the more accurate it gets), and it spits back a very visual representation of your spending. You can then go back and set budgets for individual categories: utilities, entertainment, dining, etc, and make your own. So we've created a "wedding" budget that's actually our way of tracking the wedding savings. The other neat thing about Mint is the Iphone app. It pushes updates to you, like fees on your ATM transactions, recent payments, paychecks, etc. My fiance calls it "the tattletale." Oh how true it is.

3. Style Circle Inspiration Board Maker

This is a so-new feature on Style Me Pretty and it's awesome. Instead of dealing with Photoshop to make a mood board, you can upload images directly to this application and it generates a very clean board. I particularly like it because it saves the "credits" for a photo. You can then post it directly on your own site.

One little tip though for those that save images from the web willy-nilly, like me: When you're saving the photo, save it as the credit. I cannot count how many times I've saved an image and have no idea where it came from, especially if it's something I might want to actually buy. If you want to save even more info about an image, change its "Properties." Right-click the thumbnail (sorry Macs I have no idea how you right click stuff..), click Properties, go to Details, and fill in the relevant blanks. You can then list the website and any info that may be useful later on.

4. Dropbox

This is something I really like but don't use enough - if I did, I'd have access to all of my clippings! You sign up for their free service and then download the widget for all of the computers you use. After that, you can "drop" files you want to share with yourself into the box, for access later from any of your computers or the web. You can also share folders with other users, which is what I've done with my fiance and my mom again. So instead of forcing her to check her email to see inspiration photos, I just drop the photos in the box.

So those are my web essentials for planning. Do you have any favorites?