The new bargains I'm Baracking

You know my alter ego Haute Cocoa's all about the stylish bargains, while Mr. Hot Cocoa and I are all about political engagement (pun intended).  Well, my split personalities have been integrated through the new Runway to Change store on Barack Obama's campaign site.  Not quite ready to invest in the $8000 Vera Wang gown?  How about this sweet little Vera tee for a mere $60?

[Vera Wang t-shirt.]

I have a massive crush on this sexy secretary dress from Nanette Lepore.  It's so very Joan from "Mad Men."

[Bloomingdales.]

It's out of my price range for now, but this darling Nanette Lepore tee isn't!

[Nanette Lepore t-shirt.]

Not only are there tees, tanks, and even a wrap sweater, Runway to Change also carries several chic and affordable bags (including ones by DVF and Marc Jacobs!) and even some accessories. I got myself the Nanette Lepore shirt and a gorgeous "Be the Change You Want to See" scarf from Rachel Roy, and unlike my recent excursion to Anthropologie, this was one shopping spree that didn't leave me feeling guilty.  

And conservative bees, I'm not about to leave you hanging.  Here's where you can get those Kazuo Kawasaki 704 glasses that Sarah Palin's been rocking on the trail.

Shop early and often!

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Spellbound

My favorite board game?  Scrabble.  Most lamented Facebook loss?  Scrabulous.  Book I'd take to a desert island?  The Oxford English Dictionary.  Favorite historical novelette?  The Professor and the Madman.  Favorite freebie website?  Dafont.com.

In case it's not obvious, I am a word nerd.  N-E-R-D.  Nerd.  So you can imagine my excitement when one of my favorite websites, Lifehacker, introduced me to a fun little application called Spell with Flickr.  This app does exactly what it's called: it spells out the word(s) of your choosing using Flickr images.  Like this:

Or this:

I contemplated using this to create our save the date cards, but in the end decided on another design (which I promise to share soon).  I do love love love this app, though, and would be excited to use it for some other project -- perhaps a framed art piece for a friend's birthday or even holiday cards?

Have you tried this app?  What would you use it for?

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Consider yourself booked . . . or not.

Like all graduate students I know, I am a terrible procrastinator and find it all but impossible to get things accomplished unless there's an impending deadline (and usually some threat of a cut-off of funding).  Well, it turns out according to my Martha Stewart online wedding checklist, we are supposed to send out our save-the-dates in less than two weeks.  Naturally, we are woefully unprepared for this.  We haven't finalized a guest list.  We have no addresses yet.  And, of course, we have no save-the-dates printed.  Martha is tsk tsk tsking at us right now.

Just to get my imaginary Martha to take a chill pill, I spent this weekend putting together some mock-ups of possible save-the-dates.  Here's one of them.  Behold: our almost save-the-date bookmark:

I came up with this idea while thinking about what Mr. Hot Cocoa and I do best, which is go to school.  We've both been in school for an ungodly and embarrassing number of years, so I thought I'd create an homage to that with a bookmark.  The plan was to Gocco these on purple cardstock.  I would have used silver ink for the printing and a slightly darker purple ribbon for the tassel.

Since I already had the Gocco supplies, these bookmarks would have been relatively inexpensive to produce.  All I had to purchase was the cardstock, the ribbon, and letter-size envelopes for mailing.  But as I contemplated my schedule over the next two weeks, I realized that I would go batty if I had to create 150+ bookmarks while balancing my teaching and writing responsibilities.  I especially recoiled in horror at the thought of having to punch the double happiness symbol into each bookmark, since punching on cardstock is a carpal-tunnel-inducing nightmare.  

So basically what I'm trying to tell you is that this once-ambitious DIY bride got lazy.  Very very lazy.  And this bookmark idea had to go bye bye.

Did you have DIY ambitions that were thwarted by real life?  What projects have you had to scale down or reconsider?

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