Fast Forward

To this weekend.

Saturday morning Kristina and I packed up and headed up to Napa for Michelle's birthday party. I can't lie, it was a little odd making a journey to Napa without Scott. That said, we had a tremendous day visiting wineries and enjoying a girl's day out. There were 11 of us loaded on a bus to take Napa by storm in our most fun fashions!

All of us at our first stop, Grgich.

Family photo-Aimee, me, Kristina, and Michelle (aka, me and my nieces...oh, and they are all older than me. Work that one out!)

Thanks for having a birthday, Michelle! It was a perfect day!

Cue Sunday. Kristina and I headed back early this morning because we had important business to tend to. WEDDING INVITATIONS! Kristina so generously offered to make our wedding invitations. I am not sure that I have ever mentioned the very large piece of equipment that lives in our garage...the letterpress. It is an old, old, old trade that is extremely impressive to see in action. Even more impressive, Kristina taught herself how to do this. Kudos to her for picking up a trade from the 1400s! The best way for me to explain letterpress is to think of something you have had embossed and reverse it.

The whole process today took 5+ hours to complete. So don't throw your invitation away, it is a piece of art! If you ever want anything letterpressed just let me know, I have the perfect person for you!

Plate #1

A step back in time...

Scott excited to start printing!

Test print #1 (of about a million)

I even got to help. Apparently my OCD comes in handy from time to time :-)

Lola playing her part

Color #1 hanging to dry. In order to get two colors on the invite we had to press all 200 (room for error) invitations twice.

Kristina working her magic

Color #2 drying. Aren't these the most fantastic thing you have ever seen?!

Art. Seriously.

The garage was taken over by invitations.

Now we just have to address all of the envelopes and get these out the door. At least I have a month to work on that. Thank you is not a big enough expression to Kristina. We LOVE our invites. I wanted to save all of the mess ups just because so much time and energy went into them to throw them away. I love it all!

I leave you with a little known fact. Vegetable spray (PAM) works as an incredible paint thinner. Who knew?

Tomorrow, Giants game. I will sleep when we are in Italy!