A Little Extra Effort Can Go A Long Way

See this:

Rental Company Price List

Now see this:

Fabric Store Price List

Notice anything? A difference in prices perhaps? The fact that the price to purchase a table linen is cheaper than renting one?


That's right, folks. It looks like we may end up the proud owners of a giant stack of linens to save us a few buckaroos. Renting linens for almost $13 each sounds like rip-offery to me. As part of my ongoing effort to get the most for my buck, I'm researching the heck out of anything and everything that we'll need to purchase for the reception. This linen find was the result of a couple of hours of me strolling through the Los Angeles Fabric District and chatting it up with different store employees.

The prices you see here are for good quality linens that are made at the store. I found even cheaper ones that are imported from elsewhere. So prices go even lower - especially if you've got good bargaining skills. Anything to save a buck, homie.

How do you stretch those budget dollars?

Can't Wait...For A Roomie

Last November, Mr. Tortolito and I took a huge financial step together when we became homeowners. We scored ourselves a chic, modern loft in Downtown LA. Previously, I lived in a more suburban area about 40 miles east of LA with my family. My first experience living in downtown was during my college years at USC, and when I moved back home after graduating I knew that I would be back to the city eventually. Well, that eventually is now and I love it. I love the energy, history, diversity, public transportation (it's getting better!), crowds, buildings, community events, movie sets, nightlife, my much shorter commute to work, everything! The only thing missing is, well, Mr. Tortolito.

Apparently, when Mr. Tortolito met with my parents to ask for my hand in marriage they expressed their concern over the possibility of us moving in together before getting married. Not wanting to upset or worry either set of parents, he told them that we would not live together before marriage. My parents are pretty traditional-minded. I value tradition and my upbringing, and I respect it because it's made me who I am and I'm proud of that. Yet, I grew up and was educated in completely different times and environments than my parents (as is usually the situation, isn't it?) We don't tend to see eye-to-eye on many issues and I guess this is just another example of that.

Honestly, not living with Mr. Tortolito is pretty damn annoying. This is his home as much as it is mine, yet we don't enjoy it the same. He pays mortgage, helps furnish and decorate it, helps clean and cook, goes shopping for home items with me, hangs out here, and at the end of the day he goes back to his parents house and calls me to say goodnight. Sounds silly right? Right! According to Mr. Tortolito, he is a "man of his word" so I guess he doesn't want to upset anyone. I understand; I respect his parents as much as he respects mine so I see where he's coming from. But still... I'm allowed to complain a little, right?

Anyway, if we really wanted to and if this ever created a strain on our relationship, I know that we would take action. Really, the decision is ultimately up to us. But like I said, this is based on respect. Plus it's really not that difficult to wait a year for him to move in especially when we have the rest of our lives to live together. If anything, this experience has brought us closer like no other.

Although living alone can be lonely and annoying, I tend to look on the brighter side. I came up with this list of things that are great about living alone that I can revisit whenever I need a reminder:

• I have complete control over what's playing on the TV. ESPN?! umm..how about America's Next Top Model, or American Idol, or The Hills, or So You Think You Can Dance. Yeaaaa, that's what I'm talkin' bout.
• The toilet seat is ALWAYS down.
  
• I can wake up at 5am to go to the gym without worrying about waking up anybody else.
• I can sleep in until 7/7:30am without worrying about getting woken up by anybody who leaves to work earlier than I do.
  
• Closet space. All mines.
• Too lazy to make dinner? A peanut butter & jelly sandwich is the perfect fix! I think I wouldn't help but feel like a bad wife if I fed that to my hubby for dinner.
• I don't feel bad about leaving my makeup/hair products/brushes/curling irons/etc all over the bathroom. They won't be in anybody's way.
• Alone time? I got plenty.
• Meeting the girls for a drink after work? No prob, nobody's waiting for me at home.
  
• How lucky am I to be a 25-year-old girl living in such an exciting city all on my own? It's like the "me against the world" feeling..haha!
• ANTICIPATION. Wow, I can't wait for him to move in. Isn't anticipation such a great & exciting feeling?!

Whew, I almost make it seem like living alone isn't all that bad huh? It's really not especially when I know we're on a timeline now. I'm trying to enjoy this limited amount of time that I have on my own in our little casita. I'm doing my own thang while at the same time "nesting" and getting our home ready for Mr. Tortolito's arrival. Its just anothing thing to add to the excitement of our upcoming nuptials!

Every couple's living situation is different. I guess we all just need to make the best of our situations, whatever they may be. What are your thoughts?

Where tha Party At

Ahh, finding a wedding venue; the spot where it allll goes down. An inevitable task on a couple's interminable to-do list (usually found in the higher-ranking portion of the list). For us, signing this contract really got the ball rolling in terms of wedding planning. Getting to this point, though, was the real biootch.

To this day, the venue search was our most time consuming effort. Mr. Tortolito and I spent every weekend for about two and a half months researching and/or visiting reception venues around Southern California. That might not sound like a lot of time to some, but man was it exhausting. We needed a spot to have our large, festive party. We weren't really looking for something super elegant; just a place with character that would fit our vision of a traditional Mexican celebration. In a perfect world, we would celebrate our wedding in a beautiful hacienda or old vecindad (neighborhood) like these:



{Sources: Casa Herradura & my personal foto}

Properties like these are hard to come by in a big city like Los Angeles. There are a lot of private residences or properties in Southern California that could have fit the bill, but they were either too far away from LA (we wanted to stay as close to the city as possible) or way too expensive (def the biggest deal breaker).

I'll get straight to the point and share the fruit of our 2+ month efforts with you. It turned out to be one of the most popular reception venues in Los Angeles and the reason why we are getting married in November. When we began inquiring back in late summer of 2008, it was already booked all through summer/early fall 2009! So we snatched a date in November 2009 with the hopes that the weather will hold out for us.

Our wedding reception will be held at the Los Angeles River Center & Gardens, and I'm pretty much in love with it:






Arches, wrought-iron gates, secret gardens, talavera fountains, courtyards... I know, right?

I can't tell you how relieved I was once we booked this place. Oh, and the freedom that came with it! The freedom to select a caterer (they used to allow any caterer, now they give you a pretty extensive "preferred" list), and to BYOB. Can I tell you how good that feels? To NOT be locked in to a $100+/person catering fee plus $20+/person open bar fee. Oh man it's a good feeling. Basically, you rent the place and it's all yours for 12 hours. Heart!

Even though searching for a venue proved to be awfully time consuming, I think that the hours spent researching and comparing prices were very worth it. Can anyone else attest to this?

Reserva la Fecha: Tres

Oh those "do-it yourself" save the dates. A lot of time and effort went in to those... a lot! Which kinda worried me about the time it would take to complete our invites and the rest of our stationery. This meant that more arts and crafts time awaited us! But returning to those save the dates, so of course we were all excited about printing an image, burning it, using El Gocco to stamp to our hearts' desires. Easy, right? But did it all go well? FALSE!


The biggest problem we encountered was the lack of symmetry on the design. To start off the project, we took my image, multiplied it, and printed out an image for burning with the Gocco. We knew that we would need to stamp our Save the Date twice, since the Gocco screen was not big enough to cover the actual postcard size paper in one stamp. We did not think ahead about symmetry, though, and totally made lining up our two stamps impossible.

Ms. Tortolita stamped one side, then flipped over the card, stamped the other side.... and of course our talavera tile design did not match up. Instead of having full closed circles at the boundary line where both our stamps meet, we ended up with a snake like design. weah! So, we decide to burn another screen (using the same image, but now mirrored) and finally got our circles to close but in a very awkward way. Our half circles overlapped most of the time and stamp alignment was eyeballed everytime. Double weah!

We decided to line up what we could and ended up with these samples (shown all the way at the bottom). This left us with a blank strip right down the middle. So what can we put there that would look alright and blend in with the card? Ribbon! Good job, you figured it out! Haha, we biked to Moscatel's in Downtown L.A., and bought some burgundy ribbon (wide enough for that space). Went back home, cut strips the length of the card's width and realized the ribbon was too transparent. So we doubled up and used two strips per STD! We used spray adhesive (which is completely messy and leaves your fingers sticky for hours!) to attach the ribbon without ugly blobs of glue leaving completely smooth... and ta-da! Our upgraded STDS:



Sweet! With the back side complete... we worked on the front side (the stuff that really matters). We decided to go conservative... simple text and a picture of us. We actually went on an engagement-moon over a year ago to the beautiful Mexican state of Guanajuato and decided to take engagement pictures (I did not know such things existed back in the day) in the picturesque city of San Miguel de Allende. We opened our favorite picture in Adobe Photoshop, fit as many wallet-sized pictures as we could in an 8x11 sheet of paper, went to Kinko's and printed them out on photo paper (they charge per sheet, so fill up your sheet to its max! And save as a jpeg, or else they have to do it for you, and of course this service isn't free!).

We used Adobe Illustrator to design the text, Gocco'd it and bam! Done! We did have to do bilingual sets since most of our family members speak Spanish. Hence, our "Reserva la Fecha" posts (i.e., "Save the Date"). Here, is what our invitees found in their respective mailboxes:



Y en español!


They turned out pretty sweet I suppose. We attached the pictures with double-sided mounting tape (au contraire to the original picture corner mount). But oh well, this was easier, and by this time, we were exhausted.

Oh yeah, so of course Ms. Tortolita will not put printed stickers on her beautiful envelopes. Each one had to be addressed individually in calligraphy.... all of them! And who is the local calligrapher we know? Me! Haha, I've never done calligraphy in my life but Ms. Tortolita thinks since I took 1 (ONE!) art class in college, I'm like Van Gogh or El Greco, or I don't know who. So, we bought a set of calligraphy markers (not the needle ones, those looked too hard to try to handle in such a short notice), typed all the addresses on screen using a handwritten font, and I copied from the screen to our envelopes by hand. Here is what the end result looks like...



Do-it yourself projects are definitely a lot of work, but the fiancee and I appreciated the opportunity to once again work as a team to get cool stuff done. Go Team Claudia y Felipe! Haha. corny I know...

Reserva la Fecha: El Gocco

Our Save the Dates were our first project using El Gocco. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one from a former bride-to-be who had no more use for it. Through this project, I grew to love El Gocco and I grew to hate him.

Now I know that there are tons of Gocco tutorials out there. But if you're like me, even watching tutorial after tutorial kept you thinking "WTF, I still don't get it." So I'm going to put one more out there just as an attempt to maybe, hopefully reduce the amount of people out there still thinking WTF con El Gocco.


Everyone always says that you have to use a laser printer to print the design that you are going to burn with your Gocco, or make a copy of the image and use that. Apparently, carbon-based material in the toner is essential for successful "burning" of your image. Since my printer is an inkjet printer that does not use toner, I had to make a copy of the image. Once I made my copy, I cut down the image so it would fit on the Gocco sticky pad, and stuck it on.


Next I inserted a brand new screen (blue side out) into the slots on the top part of the Gocco.


Here's the yellow Gocco lamp house. No flashbulbs attached just yet.


Gocco lamphouse after I screwed in the one-time use flashbulbs.


Next, you place the lamphouse back on the Gocco and get ready to push down on the top part of the Gocco to activate the flashbulbs and initiate "burning" of your screen.


You'll hear a loud "POP," will smell some nasty shiz burning but it's all good. That just means your Gocco is working its magic. Lift the top part of the Gocco again and you'll notice that your image is now stuck on the screen.


All you gotta do is peel the image off the screen. You'll notice that the image has been transferred to the screen. Aha! This is what they mean when they say "burning your image." The flashbulbs create an environment that is so hot that it burns the carbon-based material onto your screen. Sweet!


The next thing you gotta do is slide your screen off the Gocco, turn it around and peel off the transparency on the opposite side of the screen, and apply your ink over your image.


Once you're done applying the ink, put the transperancy back over the ink, and slide it back into the Gocco slots. You're ready to start stamping!

Close the top part of El Gocco, apply pressure, aaand...

Stamped! jeeeeaah!
I did the same thing for our "signature design."

...and made a serious design flaw. Damn. I was going to stamp the entire back side of our Save the Dates with the talavera design, but apparently I forgot the rules of symmetry and El Gocco hates me. After hours of frustration and do-overs, I decided that my attempts were futile. I was ready to give up on this idea, but Mr. Tortolito had some other plans. Here's a sneak peak:


Up next: how we rectified the situation and the final outcome of our Reserva la Fecha project.

What do you think about El Gocco? Friend or enemy?

Reserva la Fecha: Design

As the six month mark to the wedding date approached, Mr. Tortolito and I began to take the "Reserva la Fecha" (our translation for "Save the Date") business a lil bit more seriously. We wanted it to reflect our Mexican theme and incorporate a festive color scheme somehow. After determining a general "look" for our project, it was time to bring it to fruition!

I'll start from the beginning: choosing a design. We wanted something "talavera" like. Talavera is a type of typical Mexican pottery, and I am a little bit obsessed with it. It's the Mexican damask, bbs!

Anywho, Mr. Tortolito sent me this image that he found while googling "talavera:"

{Foto source here}

We both agreed that we liked the design, so Mr. Tortolito digitized the image to obtain this:


The image was good, but still a little too rough around the edges. I decided to utilize my copy of Adobe Illustrator to smooth it out and clean it up.

{{Disclaimer: Prior to this project, I had ZERO experience with Adobe Illustrator. I'm still getting familiar with its features and it takes me hours to do what an experienced person can do in probably minutes. I don't know if I'm using any of these features correctly, but I'm learning! Please allow me to embarrass myself as I attempt to impart my beginners knowledge to you.}}

Step 1: I opened the jpeg file with Adobe Illustrator. It looks a little something like this:

Step 2: Click on the image in the middle of the screen. Find OBJECT at the top in the toolbar, scroll down to LIVE TRACE, and select MAKE like so:

Step 3: Adobe Illustrator works its magic:

You get something with smoother, more defined borders and equal shading throughout. Much nicer, eh?

After that, I used Photoshop to copy and paste the same image to create the tile effect:

Once we got a basic talavera design down, it was time to implement it with El Gocco. Yep, I'm a Gocco bride and I have a love/hate relationship with El Gocco. Stay tuned to hear more about the progression of the Tortolito's "Reserva la Fecha/Save the Date."

Anyone else using a "signature design" for their stationery?

I Win

I told you about my floral fail and how I went to the pros for some much needed guidance. Today I share with you the results of my second attempt at making a fresh pomander. This time, I might have known what I was doing. And if not, I pretended to know. Either way, I got a result and this time me = happy.


Mr. Tortolito and I had a free Saturday morning, so we jumped on our bikes and rode to the LA Flower District. We picked up our crafting supplies as well as some carnations, mini roses, and a couple bunches of mums.




We began with a mum pomander first. The first step was to secure our ribbon to the styrofoam ball using pins:



We yanked the mums off the stems, poked them through the middle with a pearl pin, and stuck em into the styrofoam ball one by one.



Keep on poking in those mums until the styrofoam is completely covered, and you're dunzo!


We made another pomander using red/yellow mums, and then combined whatever we had left over to make a pom that resembled a soccer ball. These were super easy once we got the hang of it.



After our success with using styrofoam to create our pomander, we moved on to the real challenge: using an oasis ball.

We secured the ribbon to these balls in the same manner as we had for the styrofoam balls. Next we wet the oasis ball and allowed it to hang until the water stopped dripping.


After the drippage stops, we started poking in our carnations. We cut the carnation stems to approx. 2 inches since we wouldn't be using any pins to insert these flowers into the foam.


Apparently we didn't follow Nancy's directions for this one. We used regular sized carnations instead of mini carnations, and the head of the stem was too big to push into the foam. It left us with lots of bald spots. woops!


Not to fear! We filled in the bald spots as best as we could with the mini roses. It looked a bit better but I still think the mini carnations would look much nicer.


And there you have it. I am happy to not report any fails this time! Something to keep in mind, however, was that the mums shrank considerably within the next 24 hours. I left them hanging around my home with the air conditioner on but you could definitely see some bald spots between the mums the next day. The carnation pomander, however, survived just fine! If I decided to go with this project for the wedding, I'm not sure how I would preserve them for over 24 hours but I guess that's something I can worry about later. For now, at least I know it's possible to make them on our own.

Cost breakdown? You got it!

1 bunch of mums OR carnations from the LA flower district: $8
1 styrofoam ball from Moskatels(craft store in the flower district): $2
1 oasis ball from Moskatels: $4.50
1 roll of ribbon from Moskatels: $5.00
1 box of pearl pins from Moskatels: $3.25

Mum pomander: ~$15/each (considering that we only used some of the ribbon and have plenty left)

Carnation pomander: ~$22-$25 (I forgot how much the mini roses cost! I think they were about $10ish)

Anywho, it was a fun project and can potentially save lots of money if we decide to make these for the wedding. What do you think? Is it worth it?

(In case you missed it on my previous post, Nancy's tutorial can be found here. Enjoy!)

Blame it on the a-a-a-alcohol!

{Source}

Rafaello Santi originally painted the cherubinos lounging around waiting for something divine to happen, but I guess these little angels got a bit too bored, huh!? lol! Well, these angels are no different than regular mortals, when it comes to lounging around... let's have a drink! (Note: Not a fan of the smoke which is why I recommend the patch to our angelic homies).... Anyways, today's subject..... the cocktail hour!


When Ms. Tortolita and I picked out the venue for our party, we understood that we had to provide our own catered dinner and our own alcohol. When discussing alcohol, this option proved to be very refreshing (no pun intended). This means the Tortolitos have full control over how much should be served, what to serve, and when to serve it. Everything is under our control, right?! FALSE!

When our families throw parties, we always have unlimited amount of alcohol.... beer and tequila shots everywhere! Both of our dad's love their drinks, maybe a bit too much for our liking. Actually, my dad is a bartender and was the first person I came to for advice. Of course he suggested to buy cases and cases of patron, vodka, whiskey, rum, cognac, and everything imaginable... all to be available at an open bar which should be open all night long. Ummm... FALSE! Knowing my invitees, this will end in senseless debauchery and forgotten memories. No fun... the last thing we want in our wedding is to deal with drunkards who eventually have to jump on the 110 freeway without on-ramps to go back home. Don't get me wrong... we both enjoy our occasional cocktails, but when there is an open bar, ppl take advantage of the situation and drink drink drink! Once again, I have no problem treating our friends and family to drinks.... but there is a such thing as too much....

The goal is to treat our guests to some drinks while they lounge around waiting for us to return from our photoshoot or the occasional drink to accompany their dinner... but how can we achieve this goal. Here is what our options seem to be. Oh, actually, before we start listing.... you all have to take advantage of BevMo's 5 cent sale... buy one bottle of wine and get a second for 5 cents..... wow! Ms. Tortolita and I stocked up on our wine and champagne... and basically saved 40-50%..... amazing... I heart BevMo! Anyways, let's go to our options....

• Make our male parentals happy and allow them to drink anything and any amount all day ..... haha... FALSE... not an option.
• Rent out mix drink glasses, so that the bartender has no choice but to serve mixed drinks... and no shots! Shots are fun... but become dangerous too fast!
• Offer a list of drinks to choose from and only buy the ingredients needed for those drinks. Sure we limit our guests' choices, but I think they shouldn't mind. Their primary purpose is to enjoy their time with us and remember how the Tortolitos officially become their own familiy. Plus we can avoid the "See you later's", the Jager bombs and the "Long Island Ice Tea's"
• Have an open bar, with a wide selection available, but give each guest (over 21+) a couple of carnival tickets they can barter for a drink. This one initially sounds like a good idea, but when we consider that most of the women in our party don't drink and they don't know how to drive, the doodes will be able to double-up easily. When the dads have to drive their family (kids!) back home and under those conditions.... yea.... not going to happen.
• Just have beer, wine, and champagne.... the light drinks.... and limit the amount?
• Kool-Aid for everyone! Or how my family would say it.... Kool-ay! Without spiking it too!

I don't know... Ms. Tortolita need to decide how to be responsible for irresponsible people. It's funny how so much needs to be considered. Actually, decision-making for this wedding is centered under one single theme: optimization! In her words... perfection! This day will definitely be fun... there is no doubt about that.... all we have to do is make it fun. It's all on us.

So, blog world, what do you recommend? How should we handle the a-a-a-alcohol?

Not a Florist

I heart fresh pomanders. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it's my love for fresh flowers or the appeal of a dainty, bouncy ball of pretties. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I heart.

{Source}

{Source}

Unfortch, pomanders are in that group of wedding items that don't agree with my budget. I mean, do I really need pomanders? Prolly not. But I still heart. Well, what's a girl to when she likes and wants something that she can't afford: she makes it!

Yessir, I made my own pomander. And let me tell you, it was......a complete fail.

::sigh::

Let's face it, I'm an engineer not a florist (oh, how I wish I were a florist!). I don't have that magic touch and based on my first attempt at creating my own pomander, my touch repels flowers.

I'm not sure if I should be sharing this...I'll probably lose all my do-it-yourself credibility if I do. But what the hell we all enjoy a good chuckle, don't we?


I tried really, really hard to convince myself that it was "okay." It's not that bad, right? How ugly can a pomander be? It's made of fresh, natural, beautiful flowers for goodness sake!

FALSE

Again, I'm an engineer. Not a florist. :(

After the denial stage, I came to terms with my fail. I've accepted it and it's all good. BUT, that doesn't mean that I give up. I'm an engineer dammit! We don't give up. You, um, problem solve...by asking someone else to solve your problem. Ain't no shame in tha game! So, one day I gathered all my courage and posted a question for Nancy from Nancy Liu Chin Designs on WeddingbeePRO. How excited was I when she actually responded to my question!?

And how much confidence did it give me to continue my pomander-making efforts? A Lot! Enough that I'm willing to share my results with you, with a lil mo' pride this time....in my next post - promise.

Alright, I shared one of my first do-it-yourself disasters. Your turn. Spill it.