Reggae Sunday

I am horribly behind in my blogging. I can't believe I'm a week behind! I've been busy, but the good kind of busy. I've had some time to complete design projects AND socialize with friends. I will try to recap in chronological order.

Sunday, August 3rd - Reggae Night at the Hollywood Bowl
This is one of our favorite shows of the Hollywood Bowl Season. Rob and I have seen this show every year we've been together...except for last year. (The show was the weekend before our wedding.) The line-up for this year's show was a bit odd. The openers were Beres Hammond and Barrington Levy, two reggae greats. The weird part is they opened for UB40?!! I consider UB40 to be Reggae Light. Nonetheless, we coerced some people into going. This year's group was rather large. We had 18 people join us this year.

The show was a lot of fun. Every member of our group was up and dancing at one point or another. Some [cough, Rob, cough] were up dancing the whole time. Overall the performances were excellent. Although, I have to say UB40 mellowed and thinned out the crowd. The upside to their performance is that many people were singing along to their hits. Here's a video tidbit.


UB40 at the Hollywood Bowl from Anne K. on Vimeo.

And here are some photos.

Rob and I at the beginning of the fun.
Almost forgot to have a photo taken of ourselves!


Rob working his mojo with the food.
As you'll see,this a huge contrast to what Kevin and I dragged to the last show.

Here's an overview of our spread. All the snacks temporarily occupied 3 seats!

Marinated Mushrooms, Olives, Spinach Dip, and Eggplant Carbornara

Lu, Dan, Amanda & Jenny

Joellaann, Keren, & John

Stefan, Lisa (both not facing the camera), Matt & Jeannette

Damon, Landon, & Dave

Me jokingly doing my "Kissy Face" pose.
This photo is for Cicely who stalks my blog, but NEVER comments

Little Things Add Up

I have my very fun Sunday to recap and I will get to that a little bit later. I have been remiss in blogging about my design projects. This is not for lack of work. Thankfully, I have been fairly busy. Over the last month, I have been working on 2 invites suites and a plethora of small projects. It's these small projects that have really kept me busy. In the last couple of days, I have delivered 3 of them.

The first of these to be delivered were personalized notecards. These were requested by Melissa. Melissa wanted to give them as gifts for the hostesses of her bridal shower. She described one hostess as funky and the other as a girly girl. This is what I created for her.


The second project I delivered was for Wendy. She requested Bridal Shower invites for Janice. For this job, I was able to resurrect a design that another client had decided was not in keeping with the style and theme of their wedding. To add a teeny bit of flair, I created a matching envelope liner.



The latest project to be delivered was custom table numbers for Frances. Frances and her fiance Michael wanted to incorporate pictures of themselves growing up as part of their table numbers. Frances emailed her photos to me and I created a simple design. They had a whopping 17 tables! So, this could probably be classified as a medium-sized project. I didn't want to bombard this post with too many photos.






That was a preview of my small projects. I'll be debuting the two invite suites shortly.

Double the Fun - Part 2

After assisting Paola with Leann & Geoff's wedding, I dashed home. I got home with enough time to catch a power nap and change my clothes. I was off to my second wedding of the day. Thankfully, this time I was a guest. I was graciously invited to the wedding of Daniella & Josue. I had designed their wedding invitations. I had also become friends with Daniella over the course of a year. She was one of the first knotties I had met in person.

Daniella and Josue made many sacrifices and budgeted very carefully to allow them to invite all of their friends and family. Their guest list was in the 200+ range. Daniella and her mother did many DIY projects to give the wedding a very personal touch.

The ceremony & reception was held at the Westridge Golf Club in La Habra. As I rushed to get to the ceremony, I second-guessed taking the power nap. I was cursed with getting stuck in the infamous L.A./O.C. bottleneck that occurs on the 5 Freeway. This made me "that jerk". You know, the one that shows up late for the ceremony. Thankfully, I had only missed the introductory words. I was there for the majority of the ceremony. I stood in the back. I am certain that I am a sap because I got misty-eyed while they were reciting their vows and exchanging rings. In my defense, it was a very beautiful ceremony in which the vows were mostly traditional, but tinged with a bit of humor.

Ceremony held at the Golf Club's Gazebo

Exchanging Vows

Mr. & Mrs. E - Daniella & Josue.

After the ceremony, I caught up with the 3 other knotties that Daniella had befriended and invited as well. The hors d'oeuvres were delicious. We spent the majority of the cocktail hour oohing and aahing over all the little details that Daniella and her mother had put together.

Floral Initials at the entrance to the venue

Bubbles & Ceremony Programs made by Daniella & her mom

The Ever Popular Escort Card Trees

Escort Cards

Candy Buffet

Cake

Table number

Centerpiece

If I could use one word to describe the whole event it would be "heartfelt". Daniella & Josue had smiles that could light up an entire city. Their family and bridal party looked equally happy. The reception was filled with many tributes to the bride, groom and their many friends and family in attendance. They even included a "knottie GTG" picture in their slideshow.

As a side note, I am a gluttonous pig. I enjoyed both buffets - dinner and candy. I don't think I will ever tire of candy buffets. Because of my action-packed day and the long drive I had ahead of me, I left the reception a tad bit early. Either way, I had a good time.

Knotties!
(L-R) me, Carmela, Daniella, Ramona, & Ingrid)

Taking a break from all the excitement

Double the Fun - Part 1

I love weddings. To prove it I attended not one, but TWO weddings. For the first wedding, I assisted my dear friend Paola of Just Chic Events. Paola is THE most thorough event planners I have ever met. Because of this, it was very easy to be her assistant. Honestly, it was more fun than work. I'm hoping she'll call on me again to help [Paola: hint, hint].

This was a small wedding at the Ayres Hotel in Hawthorne/Manhattan Beach. I had no idea this venue existed or that it was so beautiful on the inside. The hotel sits right by the 405 Freeway across from Costco. I assisted Paola with setting up the ceremony and reception. Leann (the bride) and Paola conceptualized and executed many details that made this wedding a very stylish affair.

As an added bonus, Leann (the bride), Geoff (the groom) and their families were incredibly charming and sweet. Leann's family's interactions with one another were eerily similar to my own family's on my wedding day. The couple's flower girl and ring bearer were hilarious and provided entertaining color commentary throughout the whole event. I really wish I had a video camera to capture some of the funny things they were saying and doing.

Sadly, I was unable to stay and assist through the whole event. I had to rush home and change for the second wedding of the day, which I will blog about in a separate post.

During the course of the day, I discovered that Leann reads my blog. [WAVES "HI" to LEANN]. Here are some photos that I snapped of some of her wedding details.

Area where ceremony was held

Chandeliers in the trees

Ceremony in the hotel's courtyard.

Programs made by Leann. Love the lace punch detail on the cover!

The Often-blogged and imitated Escort Card Trees made by Paola

Exquisite Escort Cards made by Leann

Fans & Cardbox

Table with Short Centerpiece

Table with Tall Centerpieces

Menu made by Leann

Gorgeous Cake by Torrance Bakery with Cake Topper made by Paola

The Sweetheart Table

The Newly Married Mr. & Mrs. M - Geoff & Leann

My muse has returned

For the last couple of months, all the photos that I have taken for this blog or otherwise have been done using this camera - a Casio Exilim 1050. I love this camera for its portability. It takes amazingly sharp photos and does great Youtube-worthy video. I'll still be carrying this one around in my purse. For the most part, it was not photography worthy.

After a 2 year sabbatical, this arrived today.

Not Dottie of course, but the boxes on the couch with her. Inside the boxes were this camera
and two lenses. This awesome delivery was courtesy of Rob. They were a belated birthday gift. All the items were bought used on ebay and at B&H Photo & Video. I opted for a Nikon D50, sigma 28-200 f/3-5 aspherical compact zoom, and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. Since I have no aspirations to become a sports photographer or wedding photographer, this setup suits me just fine. I really have missed having an SLR. Like I have said so many time before, I've had an SLR since I was 15. I've felt naked without one.

I charged up the battery and was off and running. My first subject? DOTTIE! She's been "modeling" since she was a wee pup. She happily obliged me. Here are some of my first shots with my D50.

Dottie - Perplexed

Dottie- Trying to Cool Off

Dottie - Tired and Bored of My photo taking


Dottie - Chats


Here are my favorites

Lots and lots of photos to come.