clicks of note: you are worth much more...

get your week off to a colorful start...

• I adore my students this semester - they seriously make me want to jump out of bed in the morning and get to work early so I can create an exciting lesson for them - but my goodness, that three-day weekend was a treat.  While Mr. Q was biking across Virginia for charity, I was finishing my every-single-episode-of-Buffy rewatch, reading Outlander, and pretty much eating like the queen of the farmer's market.

LISTEN.

• Eric Hutchinson's music is always a great pick-me-up when I'm feeling bored or a little bit down.  "You Dont' Have to Believe Me" is getting me energized this morning.  I'm linking up with Musical Mondays at My So-Called Chaos.

SWOON.

Erin McGinn via Style Me Pretty

• Get ready for fall with this Audubon-inspired shoot from SMP.
• Can black diamond engagement rings become a Thing, please?
• Coco Cake Land shows off a pretty cake topped with fresh blooms.
• Green Wedding Shoes' rad tutorial for geometric boutonnieres.

SMILE.

• So we've gone from pineapples, to flamingos, to banana leaf prints.
• September wallpapers from Paper Leaf and Bohemian Gypsy Jane.
• Check out Laura's lovely farmhouse kitchen tour at Finding Home.
• Ruche's cozy back-to-school themed fall style lookbook is adorable.

FLASHBACK.

• Last year I featured jewel-toned wardrobe additions for the transition from summer to fall, rounded up romantic wedding ceremony backdrop ideas, put together a guide to buying housewarming gifts, showed off the "House United" wreath I made for football season, and put together a very preppy Southern game day outfit.
• Two years ago I shared my end-of-summer Instagrams, orange and blue and autumn apple orchard wedding inspiration, kelly green wardrobe ideas, and roundups of geometric home decor pieces and fashion accessories.  
• Three years ago, I broke down the cost of our DIY wedding flowers, showed off photos from our rehearsal, and shared my favorite peach pie recipe.

The Spin Invites

Two weeks ago, Mr. Spin arrived at my house with a lovely gift bag complete with blue tissue paper and purple ribbons...

Our invitations had arrived!  Since all of our guests have had plenty of time to see them, I'm ready to share them with the blog world.  But first, I'll take you through how obsessive compulsive I was about these things.  I'm an English teacher, aspiring writer, scrapbooker, and snail mail pen pal- paper goods are A BIG DEAL to me.  I'm also a believer in the idea that an invitation can set the tone for a whole wedding- it's the first thing your guests see and that picture and image get connected to your big day.  I keep every invitation, and I get excited when I see how the invitation "matches" the wedding- the poppies on my friend C's invite matching her bright bridesmaids dresses, my friend T's invitation matching the place cards and the icing decorations on her cake, my friend K's table numbers utilizing the same navy stardream paper as her invitation envelopes and the bridesmaid's pashminas matching the embossed pink flowers.  This is what happens when you're wedding obsessed, folks.

Finding "the perfect invitation" for a simple, elegant, Southern wedding wasn't easy.  Some of the contenders:

Dogwood Branch by Wedding Paper Divas... my venue has some dogwood accents, and it would've been nice to use a dogwood motif on paper since the real thing will be gone by the wedding day, but I didn't think it was obvious enough that these flowers *are* dogwoods.

Royal Cascade by Wedding Paper Divas... beautiful, but the colors weren't quite what I was looking for.

Verbena by Wedding Paper Divas... I was lovin' the purple and blue hydrangea-esque flowers, but not digging the modern fonts.

Hydrangea by Paperwhites Press... great, but completely over budget for the Spins, and I wanted more than one color on my invitations after the Verbena almost won me over.

So here it is, our invitation suite designed by Mr. Spin's talented cousin who owns her own invitation shop.

The materials and art are by Envelopments.  I knew that I wanted floral invitations and our main wedding flowers are hydrangeas.  We wanted to incorporate our wedding colors, periwinkle and purple.  Mr. Spin got really excited when he found Envelopment's shiny "Zircon" cardstock.  Mr. Spin's cousin suggested the matching envelope liners and I think they make a huge difference, especially since we didn't use inner envelopes.  The font used for our names and "Please Respond" is called Lily Wang and can be purchased from MyFonts- it's on sale now for 12.95, which makes me kind of sad that I paid the regular price two weeks ago.

Mr. Spin was also happy to find stamps in one of our wedding colors, and I enjoy seeing those purple pansies when the response cards land in my mailbox!  I also made a directions/additional information card using ivory cover stock, my own inkjet printer, and a Fiskars paper cutter.

So far we have 27 guests who can come and 3 who can't make it.  I've also been amused by the comments some of our friends have written on the cards- including some full-fledged letters on the backs!  After five years of dating, everyone is ready for this wedding, I guess.