Thursday, October 28, 2010

Karmic Yay!

So remember when I shared with you my napkin haul from Ikea and I mentioned that we donated a buck to to help plant new tree? Well I wasn’t completely honest with you as to why J and I were motivated to click yes when prompted to make a donation at the self-checkout kiosk. See J and I love ourselves some mother earth and try to do our part to keep her clean but we are by no means your granola crunching hippie environmentalist. So when that kiosk prompted me to donate a dollar for trees the first thought on my mind was not yay trees go mother earth. No sir the first thing I thought of was that damn kiosk announcing in its high pitched electronic voice that I the girl buying 600 paper napkins was denying mother earth a new baby tree. Yea, so I was shamed into handing over that dollar to charity but folks let me tell you that dollar paid off in a boat load of Karma points!

Let me explain, the day following my little donation to mother earth I happened to be checking my bank account and noticed that a check that I had sent the DMV for my car registration had been cashed. Usually this is would not be cause for alarm, since that’s what one expects to happen with a check, but the DMV had assured me a couple of weeks ago that they had not received the check. To make maters worse since my payment was now overdue I would now have to pay a $124 late fee on top of the $214 fee I originally owed them. I quickly called the DMV and sat on hold for an agonizing 20 min while I began think up a worst case scenario of some stranger finding my check and screwing me out of 214 bucks. How in the hell I let a check for such a large sum float around in the ether can be summed up in one word, I’m cheap and hated the idea of spending money to cancel the check. After about 20 min on hold, Katie (my new bestie at the DMV) assured me that they had cashed the check. Since my check had been postmarked the day before my payment was due I no longer owed them an extra $124 bucks!

So, you’re probably wondering what my little tail of Karmic yay! has to do with our wedding and this little blog. Like most couples these days J and our wedding budget is super tight and every wedding purchase is thoroughly discussed and agreed upon by both of us before a cent is ever spent. We try to make sure that every decor dollar we have goes to details that are going to add maximum punch and try not to spend frivolously on unnecessary details. Unfortunately these bad boys originally didn’t make the cut.

Thanks to my new Karmic windfall though I will soon be the proud owners of 200 yummy stripy gray paper straws! Since our monthly budget already took into account me sending in the extra $124 to the DMV I was able to splurge a little and make some purchases that we may not have been able to make had I paid the late fee. These bad boys set me back about 24 bucks including shipping from modernlola.com which was still cheaper that most retailers I could find online. Since I’m trying hard to keep my spending in check I’ll probably dump the rest of the money into our wedding savings but I am beyond excited about my little 24 dollar paper straws. Yay go Karma!

Image courtesy of http://athome.kimvallee.com

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Bag-o-Napkins

Ikea is my happy place. It’s not out of the ordinary for me and J to head to Ikea for a yummy lunch of Swedish meatballs and window shopping; I love the place that much. Lately J and I have been tossing around the idea of purchasing some budget nugget place setting for our wedding at Ikea in hopes that it would help keep our rental cost down. While the logistics and cost involved in providing our own dishware is still up in the air J and I no longer have to worry about renting napkins!

Recently J and I found ourselves at Ikea in hopes of purchasing a frame for our recent concert poster acquisition when we came upon these bad boys in the dishware section.

I absolutely love the gray of the stripy napkins and the price was just right at 2.50 for a pack of 30. Since we were on a napkin buying kick I threw in a couple packs of plain white napkins in case we run out of the cutesy one and some smaller cocktail napkins that will get a makeover with my trusty Gocco printer to better coordinate with our décor. The quality of the napkins is top notch and the minimal dent to my wallet makes me one happy girl.

Take a peek at the breakdown-

· Strippy 15x15 napkin- 10 packs of 30 napkins at 2.49

· White 16x16 dinner napkins- 2 packs of 100 napkins at 1.99

· White 9 ½ x 9 ½ cocktail napkins- 4 packs of 50 napkins at 1.99

· Donation to ikea to purchase a tree (and to offset our use of paper products)-$1

Total for 700 napkins to help keep our guest clean $38! Now that is what I call a budget win. Now excuse me while I give myself an air high five.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Fail

I’ll be honest with you friends having 6 posting in 6 months is what you call a blogging fail. I’m not proud of it; I had such high hopes for this little blog when I first eagerly typed my intro many months ago but to be honest I’ve hit a writing slump. In order to write about your wedding planning experience one must actually be planning a wedding and that is one thing I have not been doing!

After booking our venue sometime around July J and I kinda went into a wedding hibernation only to wake up sometime this month to realize we are 8 months out and in serious need of cracking the whip. We have a lot of exciting projects and outings in the pipeline and I’m excited to be sharing the next 8 months of wedding madness with you!