White China

I’m looking for a lot of inexpensive white china. I would love to find this pattern or something similar. Does anyone have any ideas on where to look in the Brooklyn or Austin areas?

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Ebay is proving itself to be rather expensive.

Beautiful Addresses

Calligraphy doesn’t exactly fit into our wedding budget, but as the idea of addressing invitations and thank you notes becomes closer and closer to reality, I’ve started looking into buying a custom calligraphy stamp. It all started with a slight obsession with these custom stamps. I would think about how exciting it would be when Peter and I bought a house and how fun it would be to get a custom stamp.

Then a few days ago I came across a stamp by an Etsy seller called Emililies on the Martha Stewart website.

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Then I got nervous and started worrying that the stamp wouldn’t arrive in time for us to send out our invitations, so I started looking for other sellers.

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Now I’m stuck wondering when anyone will get back to me and trying to figure out which one I like best. Which one would you choose? If you want to complicate the decision, go to their websites and look at all the other styles. Excuse me while I go check my mail–again.

Dyson

I’m sort of torn about registries.There’s a side of me that hated the process, but the rest of me actually wishes that everyone I know had a registry so that I would always be able to buy them the perfect gift. As I recently mentioned, Peter and I registered not long ago. One of the fabulous yet horrible parts of a mordern day registry is that after you leave the store you can make changes whenever you want. Because of this, we put off several main items that we were interested in (like the drill I really want), thinking that we could always add them after we had done more research. The bad part about this is that there is so much to look at. I price checked everything between all the places that we registered to make sure that our guests would be getting the best price and I have tried to find the products that I think will last us the longest. In my researching, I’ve been looking at what some of my friends are registering for. (I guess I’m just at that age when everyone I know is getting married.) Surprisingly, while many couples differ on their choice of brands for china and cookware, every single person I checked in on registered for a Dyson vacuum.

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Keep in mind these people are just my friends and family, so it might not be the most accurate search. It is interesting to me that this vacuum comes so highly regarded. I have never wanted to spend $500 on a vacuum, but with its sleek design and potential ability to tame the giant mounds of fluff that fall out of our dogs, the vacuum has made it on to our registry. (Who knows if anyone will feel compelled to buy it for us.) I’d like to take a moment to step outside my little circle and ask you, is it worth it? Or is there a different vacuum that’s a much better deal for the price? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Where Are You?

Valid question. A lot has changed in my world in the past couple of months. I quit my job at the end of May and I’m starting a company. (Nothing related to this blog, so I won’t bore you with the details.) Peter went to Chicago for the summer to teach as he often has in the past. And I decided to take the opportunity to spend a couple of months in Brooklyn. Luckily for us, we were able to rent out our place to a super-close friend. We’re still wedding planning and we will both return to Austin very shortly.

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One of my brothers lives here and it has been so nice to spend a lot of time with him. The only thing this city is missing is Peter. Maybe someday we will pack up our things and move. We’ll see. We do love our home in Austin. For now I’m just trying to soak it all in, stay on top of wedding planning from afar, and try not to miss having my own space. This means we won’t be posting any updates on our bathroom–I completely meant to finish all of that before we left. Instead, you’ll read a bit more about happenings in New York and probably a fair amount about wedding planning. If you have anything that you want me to check out while I’m here, let me know and i’ll see what I can do.

Heart Shaped Salt and Pepper Shakers

While perusing the gift shop at an art museum in Chicago, I fell just a little bit in love with these adorable salt and pepper shakers.

Had I been able to take a better photo, you probably would have loved them too. If you look closely you can sort of make out Peter’s and my reflections. The museum price was a little too high (plus we already own salt and pepper shakers), but I think they would make a really sweet housewarming gift for someone. I also just found these on the Art Institute of Chicago’s museum shop website.

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With so many elegant options for your salt and pepper, there’s no reason to settle for a grocery store set.