Ode to Joy

By Sunday at 5 p.m., the rain and clouds disappeared, providing the perfect sunny crisp backdrop for a wedding. The sheer beauty of the location took our breath away. The pure joy radiating from Lauri + Pat was magical.

All week, as I’ve recovered from a night of exuberant dancing in 4-inch heels (too stubborn to take them off because they were so cute), I’ve thought about the wedding. All weddings are happy. But this one, well this one was infused to the core with joy. Yup, I used the same word twice in one post, which breaks my own personal writing law but what can I do? It was joyful from start to finish.

Interestingly, this was the first wedding I’ve attended as a no longer married person and without a plus one. But there was no awkwardness, no sadness. Just, here it comes again, joy. Joy to be part of this celebration. To drink lovely champagne. To laugh big belly laughs with my new friends Birdy, Bebe, Becky and Mary at Table 2. To be spun around the dance floor with my borrowed boyfriends, Will and Daren. To stay until the darkness deepened around us and the quiet of the mountains took center stage. To drive in the velvet night, down winding roads, back to the bustling world, a cozy house and sleeping child. Joy.

Flower power

How the tissue paper flowers looked swaying from the trees in Tilden Park:

Complemented by gorgeous sunflowers in oversize canning jars:

Made all the more enjoyable by a plate of yummy BBQ:

Holiday sneak peak

I know, I know. It’s only mid-September. But it’s never too early for Christmas, I always say. I settled on a theme last month … this year, it’s all about silver + pinecones with some red mixed in (I’ll have loads of extra tissue paper from the wedding flower project … is it crazy to stamp it with little silver stars?) … and I have a running list of notes and plans. It seems that the folks at Williams-Sonoma had the same idea.

Last weekend, while running errands, K and I stopped short in front of the big W-S store. What’s that? A Christmas tree? Are they crazy? See, it’s all well and good for me to plan ahead but I don’t like to be rushed by the retailers. I was going to boycott but the tantalizing smells wafting from the store could not be resisted. It was an amazing . Probably because everything looked fresh since no one else has holiday up. The W-S folks are doing a Holiday Preview. All the items for the 07 season are up for a couple weeks. Then they’re going to take it all down until after Thanksgiving. I’m so curious about this marketing strategy. Would love to talk to the folks who dreamed it up.

We sampled hot chocolate, mini cakes and specialty cheeses. Oh, and picked up a couple things.

The mind reels with all the project possibilities. For now, I’m resuming my regularly scheduled flower-making programming. And on Monday, Halloween comes out. All 5 boxes of it!

Let’s party

This was the scene last evening at 6:15. All systems go, waiting for the LP wedding kick-off to begin.

There was a choice of ‘tinis … appletinis, cosmos and regular martinis … paired with grilled steak, chinese chicken salad (in the cute take out cartons), prawn spring rolls, mini risotto cakes and assorted accompaniments. Then coconut cake for dessert.

The wedding kick-off party idea is a really fun way to celebrate the bride-to-be in lieu of traditional shower with toilet paper veils and pastel mints. Since it’s close to the big day, everyone was asked to bring an item for the wedding day kit, comprised of things you were glad you had or would want to have on your wedding day. Chocolate bars, kleenex, sewing kit, lint brush, socks, voodoo doll kit (for venting frustration at any troublesome vendors), prayer beads, a flask, Tide to Go pen, and breath freshener were among the haul. Everyone was so clever! All the items went into the official wedding kit tote.

Customized candy bars were the favors.

Now it’s back to more tissue paper flowers. The big event is just days away!

Clever copy

There’s nothing like great copy to get my heart a-racing. And if it’s part of good packaging, I get downright giddy. Case in point: a box arrived today with an item I ordered from the Boden catalog and it says on the side:

How to return

1. Try everything on, and admire yourself in the mirror.

2. In the unlikely event you don’t look great, decide what you want to return.

3. Fill in the returns form attached to the enclosed despatch (sic … must be an English spelling!) note.

4. Place the items to be returned and the returns form in the box.

5. Slap the returns label on the box (covering the original address label).

6. Secure the box with sticky tape and affix the correct postage.

7. Go to the Post Office and make their day.

Brilliant! First, they assume I will look great. Thank you! But if I do have to return, the disappointment is tempered by the fact that I get to “slap” the returns label and use sticky tape. Not only that, I’ll be brightening the day for the Post Office staff. You just know I’ll be ordering from them again speedy quick.

How does your garden grow?

With tissue paper, floral wire and repetitive stress all in a row.

All these years I thought gardening wasn’t my thing. Turns out that I was working in the wrong medium. Tissue paper + folding + poufing … now that’s my kind of growing. These flowers are quickly taking over the house. Good thing they’ll headed out in a week, off to sway from the trees in Tilden Park for L & P’s pre-wedding BBQ. I might have to keep a few … I have become quite fond of them!

Of boots & snappy turns of phrase

I’m officially over the flip-flop thing. How could I be sad about feet too chilly to wear flip flops when there are these new treasures:

Kind of chic biker chick, no? Besides the new boots, I’m also sporting a new phrase picked up in blogland today: rocking socks. It’s a version of “that rocks” or “we rock” and adds a certain oomph to an already snappy term. You can use it a variety of situations. Example: you and your colleagues are nearly done with a major project. You say, “Man, we’re rocking socks.” Example 2: your friend suggests that the two of you meet for cocktails at 4 p.m. You say, “That idea rocks socks.”

Now I better go do something work-related that rocks socks or I’ll have no socks to rock.

Translations

In many ways, I am more translator than writer. I spend much of my time translating what other people have written (with all the best intentions of course) into words and sentences that are easy to read and understand. I am artful in my placement of semicolons in the right place, knowledgeable about the serial comma (though I don’t care for it) and unafraid of leaving the extraneous on the cutting room floor.

Yet sometimes words poorly translated make the most impact. Case in point: English that began as Japanese. I received a new stash of fabric from my favorite online resource, Superbuzzy, today. They specialize in Japanese fabrics and often feature storybook scenes. As I folded the freshly laundered material into neat squares, my eye fell upon this one:

And I had to laugh. There are three phrases that tell us the story.

1) The depths of a forest found a house of a cake deeply what.

2) Two people ate a cake of the full. I spent a very happy time.

3) One day a good friend brother and animals lived very much.

It may not make complete sense (or any) but sure does make me smile. Maybe punctuation is overrated.

Sock weather

I’m not a fan of hot weather. It’s, well, hot and sticky and my brain goes soft. So I await the first signs of Fall with open arms, ready to start a three-month extravaganza of holiday decorating, cooking and all-around nesting. It’s turned chilly enough these past few days for jeans and light sweaters. I was all ready for that but not, apparently, to give up my flip-flops. I’ve stubbornly stuck to my summer footwear even with freezing feet. Today, they started to look blue so I was forced to break out the socks. Guess it’s time to trade the flip-flops for the cowboy boots (and that’s another exciting sartorial story let me tell you … but not now, maybe later).

To warm things up, I’ve been making tissue paper flowers for my dear friend Lauri’s fabulous pre-wedding BBQ …

The pattern is from Martha (as in Stewart) and I’ve seen a number of samples in blogland. When Lauri and I did a couple testers, the flowers were a bit wonky. We had to turn our head to the side to see the “flower.” But still charming enough to do more. I found a great online resource for tissue paper and came home to 15 lbs of it on my front porch (the minimum order was 480 sheets per color!). It turns out that the key to a full and fluffy end result that actually resembles a flower is to use wrapping tissue, which is thicker than the “regular” tissue you can buy nearly anywhere (um, Martha forgot to tell us that part). Fortunately, that’s what we got from the Paper Mart and will have dozens of gorgeous orange and red flowers hanging from the trees!

Client love

When you freelance, you have a love/hate relationship with clients. You love them for the juicy projects they have and the fact that they help pay the mortgage. They also have the ability to make you crazy and then, ahem, you don’t like them much. I have one client for whom it’s a love/love affair, and that makes me one lucky gal. The people are smart, the projects are challenging and satisfying and they pay on time. Not only that, today, they sent me these …

24 cupcakes from my favorite local bakery. A lovely lady from Comforts appeared at my door at 10 a.m. I was certain she had the wrong house. As i was about to direct her up or down the street, she asked if I was me and told me whom they were from. Jaw-dropping surprise. A most delightful surprise. Just what I needed on a day when other parts of my life are a little off.

Three cupcakes later, I’ve finished a 1,000-word article (likely fueled by the sugar) and the warm fuzzy feeling is still going strong. Thanks best client of the world!