New Music Tuesday

Well, I usually don't participate in Tunesdays, but today I found this Australian band on the Free People Clothing blog, Angus and Julia Stone.

The music is hauntingly lovely and soft and pretty. Check them out!

This may ruin the surprise later, but...

I just designed Pinky and I's thank you notes today for our wedding. I'm so excited about how they turned out that I definitely can't wait until we send thank you notes out 8 months from now to show you!!! I saw some cute designs online that were in a similar style, but that were painted. I love using Illustrator so I thought I'd try my hand at making us in cartoon/"little people" style for the notes. It was so fun! Curly hair was hard to do, but Pinky suggested the "lightning bolt" method and it worked great :) Not sure if I'll print them on bright white or an ivory, but I think they turned out pretty fun!

In other news, we're repainting the dining room!! Yay!! I've wanted to do that for over a year. We sold the pool table that was taking up that room on Friday and went and got our NO VOC paint, FreshAire brand, yesterday. I'm painting the room a slate gray/blue color, pretty dark. As I said on my FB & Twitter status earlier, I'm 'slaying' the vampire red color that was in there, so I'm calling myself the Buffy of painting for the next few days. I am of course very proud to carry that title for a little while :) I'm about to start the 7th and final season of Buffy in the next few days and I'm super sad to see this show end for me! I've been loving it. To death.

Paperless Post

This is a VERY lovely new online invitation site I found this morning. I am very excited about it! It really makes sending online invitations very special, instead of the typical thrown-together look we've all seen on evite.com and other sites. Instead of looking like a web-page invitation, this site allows you to customize an interactive, paper-invitation sized invite. It even comes in an envelop addressed to your invitee! It's really one of the most exciting sites I've seen in a while. Enjoy!!!

You can sign up for a free membership by clicking the link below:
http://www.paperlesspost.com/invite/lauraholder1

Yay for engagement photos!

We got engagement photos taken about a week or so ago in downtown Franklin, TN with the lovely duo from souderphotography.com. They are so great to work with and are truly gifted at capturing lovely photos. We love Josh and Meg!

Here is a link to the pics they posted on their blog. We'll get a CD of more images this week sometime. Yay!! http://souderphotography.blogspot.com/

fontself.com

Typekit.com

Attention any and all web & graphic designers. This is SO fun and it's about time, actually. Check out typekit.com. You can now have your website display in a variety of fonts, instead of having to use the boring, short list of HTML fonts. Typekit is legal, standards compliant, and awesome! I'm using it on my blog right now. There are quite a few fonts available for use with a free trial account. But, the really pretty ones, of course, are available for just $24.99/year. Not bad actually, considering how much individual fonts are. With the free trial you can use up to 2 fonts per site. You simply put some javascript in your 'head' tag and then tie each font to various id tags in your CSS. It's so easy!!! Please try it out. You'll love it! <3

Our sweet friend...

We will miss you so, dear friend. I can hear your lovely laughter from beyond and know you are smiling down on us. <3

Pinky and the perfect purse

Wedding stamps
Originally uploaded by elletrain

SO, this last week I really scored. I got our lovely custom made stamps for our wedding in the mail. Aren't they so lovely and adorable!!?? I ordered them from Sugarletter on etsy.com. Here is the link to this stamp set: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=42139936

It's great because we have a Save the Date stamp, one for the invitations with just my name, and then one with both our names for after we're married (for thank you notes, etc.). It's the perfect set! Plus, it's nice that last names aren't on the final stamp due to our unique circumstance with Pinky's names :) I guess we can put Pinky Gonzales and Laura Jansen on stuff. Ha! I may make him hyphenate his last name!! Gonzales-Jansen. Sweet.


In other good news, I found the perfect purse! As you know that can be a life long adventure, almost as difficult as finding the right man :) Almost. I'm not THAT shallow. Anyhoo, here is a pic of it and I'm loving this guy!! 2010 is promising to be a great one folks. Can I get an amen?? xoxo

posting as the soon-to-be-Mrs. Pinky :)

SO, I haven't posted in a few weeks and it's already March! Many people that read this will already know the info I'm about to tell you, but I thought I should post it separately here anyway.


I'm engaged!!! My lovely Pinky asked me to marry him on my birthday, February 9th, while we were on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was so exciting and I was SO surprised! We got to celebrate after our special birthday drinks on the beach with my family at dinner. They were so surprised and happy, too!!


Our wedding will be October 22, 2010 here in Nashville, at Riverwood Mansion. It's a lovely historic home with a garden, where we'll have the small ceremony, and with a lovely pavilion in the back where we'll have our larger reception. I'm so excited!!!!! The planning has been fun and I've gotten a lot done, because that's how I roll. I hate waiting until the last minute! I have the MOH's dress, I'm buying my dress this week, I have the location squared away, the photographers lined-up, decoration ideas, I think I know where we'll get our cupcakes, and I'm registering a bit online today. Whew!


It's an exciting time and I was lucky enough to get to visit Arkansas this last weekend to share in the excitement with the rest of my family. We had lovely family time, as usual. I was so glad to see my brothers and my awesome sister-in-law! We got to have a nice brunch with my dad and stepmom and meet their adorable newest family member, Rudy, the schnoodle! I love saying that!

Here are a few pics from the engagement and from the family weekend. I'll keep posting more wedding planning stuff as I get it done! xoxox