Bending in the Wind

So yesterday I got yet another huge project dumped on me at work. Yay! Again, do these people not know I'm getting married in FIVE DAYS?????

Anyway, I sprint out of work to meet The Candyman at our therapist's office for our last pre-marital session. It was pretty cool! She asked us all sort of questions about when and how we knew the other was "the one," what we wanted the other to know on our wedding day, what we thought our thoughts would be. It was a great exercise! Afterward, I hauled my cookies over to a restaurant to meet a client for dinner and then bolted home. There, I found an email from the mother of my MOH (they have been driving across country this week, visiting friends and making their way to Nashville) saying that she and her husband would be arriving in Nashville a day early. RUT-RO (said in my best Scooby voice)!

God forbid folks check in without the OOT bags available to hand out! What is the point of the OOT bag, I ask you, if it is not there at check in? The whole idea of the OOT is therefore blown to bits. OK, so maybe not blown to bits. Perhaps I'm being a bit too dramatic. Perhaps.

At any rate, The Thirty-Something Bride needed to organize herself and fast! All the bags were on the living room floor in a sea of cotton totes. I know I have more than I need, but I did not know exactly how many people were coming when I started ordering stuff. Oh well. I could have waited and saved a few bucks, but then I'd by scurrying around more now than I already am. I think that's worth a few extra dineros - in hindsight.

The problem was that I needed to replace the old OOT Welcome Letter with the new one. Since I totally FAILED at getting all the pertinent info on the first round, I had to reprint. No biggie though as it was super fast. However, I didn't have enough little sticky things to close them, so I wasn't sure what to do about that. I was going to head over to Michael's to find inspiration, but it came to me on my own for once.

I still have left-over card stock, so I found a cute design over on Martha Stewart, and totally lifted it into Publisher and made my own label in my own color, with my own font, etc. I laugh at the "print only" on-line templates! *Muah, ah, ah!* I used my left-over glue dots and just made a quick seal-like thing. No, this wasn't really a new project, but a re-do project. Big diff. ;)



The Candyman pulled all the old letters and stuffed the new letters for me. So sweet. I do believe it might have been a little too much OOT for the poor Candyman.

So I started trying to organized which bags went where since people are kinda staying all over the place (part of this I totally get, the other part, not so much). I had made a few bags with some extra stuff - for the folks who were staying longer or who had kids and such and I was confusing the hell out of myself. I decided on another quick fix, just to keep from losing my mind. I ran upstairs, typed guests last names into a format I used for my favor thank you tags and printed. I punched out the names with my tag puncher thingy, punched holes in them and ran some extra ribbon through them so I could tie them onto the bags. That way, I knew which bags were to be delivered where and which to stuff extra stuff into. The whole process probably took me an extra 15 minutes, tops.

I think they are kinda cute! I dropped two groups of bags off at two of the hotels this morning. One lady was so sweet, the other, not so much. I don't know why this bothered me, but as I was handing over my totes, delicately, by the handles. She was just grabbing at them on the sides, knotting the bags up in her sweaty little fist (I'm sure it was sweaty). I mean, hello woman! Do you not know how much work I just put into these? Then, she was just tossing them on the floor. Oh no, she did not just do that. The last group I handed over to her, she went to grab at them and I pulled them away from her sweaty little palms and gave her the Icy Stare of Death and said nothing. She looked at me, cocked her head in confusion, the light came on and she reached again for the handles and placed them nicely on the ground. I smiled sweetly, thanked her and left. Do not underestimate The Thirty-Something Bride's Icy Stare of Death.

I just got off the phone with my MOH's mom! I think she'll be here in time to have lunch with me!!!!!! It's starting people, it's starting. Hang on, it's going to be a wild ride!!!!!

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

Before I was so rudely interrupted by hideous, mindless thievery, I was talking about my fabulous girl's weekend I had last week! Now, where was I?

I mentioned eating our way through the sushi menu at Peter's. I mentioned getting our first wedding present (so cool) and I think that's where we had truckus-takeus-interruptus.

Saturday morning I headed over to my friend Jan's house where Kathy was staying for the weekend to help us with OOT bags (The Candyman's aunt asked him not too long ago, "What's an oot bag? Not O.O.T, but saying oot. That's what we call them now, our "oot bags."). I was greeted with mimosas. Not a bad way to start the day, I must say.

Just a few updates on the details:
Natural covered tote bags from CheapTotes.com, $.79 each.
Iron-on transfers from Micheal's using my trusty coupons, about $.80 each.
A plethora a goodies I collected from Costco over a few months:

• RiceKkrispie Treats
• Blow Pops
• Bottle Water
• Fruit Snacks
• Lance Cheese & Crackers
• Chips
• Pretzels
• Double Mint Gum
• Mini Candy Bars
• A Map of Tennessee (free from AAA!)
• Welcome Letter
  

I added the welcome letter at the last minute because we've had SO many questions about the weekend activities that I figured I've save us some phone calls once people start arriving. It includes events, times and directions. Hopefully, it will help - if people read them. I threw those together at the last minute using my pile of left-over card stock and little confetti flowers from my invitations. I love those little things.

The total cost of the Costco goodies was about $70, but I spread that out over a good bit of time, just buying random things here and there during my regularly scheduled Costco trips. Each bag cost approximately $3.34. It ended up being a little bit more than I had planned (I was aiming for $2.75), but since we only did 40 of them it wasn't a huge cost hit. I think if we were doing large quantities, I might have forgone some of the goodies. We had PLENTY!

Once we'd had a little a.m. mimosa, we plugged in the iPod, our irons and got to work. I will say this: the iron-on directions that come with the transfers are a bunch of BULLSHIT. We messed up a few before we realized this. It says you should NOT run the iron across the transfer as if you were ironing it, but just place the iron, pick it up and place again. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Happily, the font and style of the bags leans towards an antique type of feel, so the ones we messed up really don't look that bad. Besides, anyone looking close enough has way too much time on their hands.

Jan ironed all the bags flat (I had washed them because that's what the direction said to do. Now, I'm thinking I could have skipped it) and Kathy and I ironed the transfers on.

Jan, ironing.

Kathy and The Thirty-Something Bride ironing on the transfers.

Ta-da! This one actually has a place where it's messed up (can you find it?).

Jan helped me fold and seal all the letters and then we stuffed.

The Loot!

Done!
Thankfully, Jan is letting me keep these at her house until we take them to the hotels. Whew!

We started the whole process around 10:30 am and finished before 1pm. Many hands, make light work. That would have taken me ALL DAY to finish that project. We had enough time to go shopping....

More on that later!

The List

I made the list last night. The list of crap left to do. I tried to be as specific as possible. Whoa. Let's not go there today, shall we?

I've got a few things I've forgotten to mention along the way, so I'll just all caught up on that instead of re-living the dreaded "to do" list.

A couple of weeks ago I went grocery shopping solo (this is actually an activity The Candyman and I enjoy doing together) and hit the Super Wal-Mart near our house. We hate the SWM. Hate it. We prefer the Publix because they play fun music we can dance to in the aisles. However, SWM is cheaper and since we are still on Wedding Financial Lock Down, SWM it is. Boo.

As I was meandering up and down the aisles wearing my iPod (it drowns out the screaming children), I found two more goodies I'm planning on doing something with. I can't even remember how much I bought of these! They might go in the OOT bags, or on the Kid's Table.

The old school Cracker Jacks were $.99 for 3 boxes. I can't remember how much the mini Moon Pies were, but I didn't care. Moon Pies are part of the Southern Culture. They are made in Tennessee! In the lovely town of Bell Buckle (about an hour south of Nashville), they even have a RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival that includes a 10 mile run! For my fellow runners out there, you know how good that would taste after a long run!

On to other updates. Panties. Yes, that's right, panties. Or, more specifically "thong-tha-thong-thong!" Yes, indeed. I am going to blog about panties and you can't stop me. I am generally a commando kinda girl (I know, TMI, but hey - you're still reading, right?), but for some reason that just doesn't seem "appropriate" for my wedding day. Besides, there are going to be people helping me get dressed and I really don't think flashing them my parts is something they signed up for. So, off the Victoria's Secret I went, armed with a recent $10 off coupon I got in the mail (you know I loves me my coupons). This shopping excursion was during our tax-free weekend, so I saved an extra 9.25%! I got three pairs of potential wedding panties and a few pair of post wedding/honeymoon fun-things. See!



Did I ever mention to you guys that I'm a Featured Bride on The Wedding Chicks blog? Well, I am. They offered us bloggers 50% off their store and I bought this cute T-shirt that is just like my OOT bag that I knocked off from them. I love it! The quality is really good and they are on sale now. You should get one!


Last, but certainly not least - make sure you enter the 100 FREE Save the Date contest here!

P.S. Did you guys know that Micheal's will accept JoAnn's coupons? Why am I just finding this out now?

My Knock-Off OOT Bags

OK, I had all these ideas for OOT bags. First, I thought I could do boxes, kinda like An Atlanta Bride had, but I wasn't quite groovin' on the fancy-schmanciness of a bowed and boxed vehicle for a bunch of snacks. Her boxes were more than lovely. That chickie has some serious classy style.

I really like the super-cute bags from Maptote, but I am pissed that they don't have Nashville. I mean, come on. They have Charlottesville, Virgina, but not Nashville? Please. Anyway, even if they did have Nashville, I wouldn't have paid the $15.00 per bag cost anyway. The point is moot, other than they are uber-cute, if you live in the cities of bags they offer.

A shout out to all my high school peeps in DC, yo. Source

So then I had this idea that The Candyman and I could hold a welcome sign, take a photo of ourselves and then I could print it on a sticker and put it on a bag. The Candyman was NOT down with that idea. Next!

I tossed around a few ideas and then I saw that The Wedding Chicks had a new store on their website with super-cute totes and t-shirts. Well, I kind of took their idea and made it my own! I'm not positive if I'm going to use this or not. I'd like some feedback as to whether it's neat-o-burrito or way lame because I totally knocked-off the super cool WC's with an uber-cheap Thirty-Something Bride version.

Here's the skinny:
I went to cheaptotes.com and ordered 1 canvas bag ($.99) and 1 sheet of iron-on tranfer paper ($.99). Shipping the things cost more the items themselves. However, it was still cheaper than buying a package of iron-on transfer paper from anywhere, even with my trusty coupons. I really just wanted to test it out.

So then I shared some ideas with The Candyman, who suddenly started paying attention and wanted to know what the hell an OOT bag was and that we most certainly did not need them, whatever they were.

So I just decided to go for the simple LOVE idea from the WC's. I downloaded a font called Egyptienne Zierinitialien. Yes, that is the font name and it is a pain in the ass to work with. For some reason it doesn't print O's. But then it does. But then it won't. I have no idea why, but I worked it out. I spelled out LOVE and underneath put our names and wedding date. For that, I appropriately used the font called Nashville. Both fonts I downloaded for FREE! Love that about the Internet.

I tried some different colorways and came up with this:

Of course, it has The Candyman's name and not TMC, although I think putting The Candyman would be hi-LAR-ious.

The trick for me and my non-graphic-designer-all-I-have-is-Microsoft-Paint self was to get a mirror image of this so I could print it onto the transfer paper. I figured it out with out too much hassle and printed it off and ironed it onto my cheap $.99 cotton tote.



So far, I've got the following goodies for the OOT bags: 2 bottles of water, small fruit chew things from Costco, Rice Krispie Treats, Blow Pops, pretzels, chips, mini chocolate bars (the Halloween candy size), gum and Lance's cheese and crackers. It all fills up the bag quite nicely. Can anyone think of anything else that should go in here? I was additionally thinking of loading up on that week's edition of The Nashville Scene (our local indie rag) and popping them into the totes.

What does everyone think? I probably need to just pull the trigger as the count down to The Big Show seems to be speeding quickly down to zero at break neck speed. Lord, help me.

I'm attempting a poll at the top right of the blog. Tell me your thoughts on the OOT bags!

Last, but not least. Anyone out there have time to find me an ivory flower girl dress that isn't nasty frilly polyester? Oh, and I need a Etsy flower hair clip - stat. Suggestions?