{Weekend Fun} Movie Saturday #1

For the past five years or so, I spend 1-2 Saturdays a year (we're talking the whole day here) in a dark movie theater. It's the Best Picture Showcase hosted by AMC Theaters and they show all of the Best Picture nominees. All. That's a lot of movie watching- not movies as background but movie watching. Exhausting.

All new to me!

The one I was most looking forward to seeing: 12 Years a Slave (great cast)
Favorite of the day: Philomena was the sweetest, DBC surprisingly awesome, WWS rather entertaining
Of these four, Best Picture choice: Dallas Buyers Club or 12 Years a Slave

Have you seen any of these? What did you think?
Cheers,
ashley

Are you up for the challenge?

One of my dear friends, another stationer, does a campaign every so often where she sends a card or letter every day for a month, and encourages her customers & followers to do the same. That's a little ambitious for me, but I think once a week is totally doable. (And it will help me go through my stationery stash, making room for the new items I want to print for myself!)

Will you join me on this? For the rest of 2013, send at least one note/card/letter a week. If you can do more, awesome, but at the very least, one a week.

Saturday I mailed a birthday postcard to a friend's husband, and I have another birthday card ready to be mailed on Friday. (I like to plan ahead: at the beginning of each month I get birthday cards ready to be mailed.)

These are great when you just want to send something short and sweet. Gender-neutral, too!

And if I start to hear "Oh, well I don't have any stamps..." you can stop right there.  :) I agree, going to the Post Office is usually a pain, and the grocery store only has those boring flag stamps, so just go to usps.com and order some. $1.25 shipping saves you the trip, gives you a great selection and gets them to the door/mailbox. Totally worth it.

Then, like me, you can reward yourself with new stationery! I'm wanting a full set of proper, personalized writing sheets...

So who's with me? Anyone? Let me know if you're doing this with me by leaving a comment. I'm sure I have a card or two I can send someone, randomly selected, to encourage you on this mission.

Cheers,
ashley

Weekend Getaway

Mr Inviting and I spent the weekend in Denver; he was in a gaming tournament and I did a little touring...

Snowy mountains in the back, from the rail stop.

Cream Tea from House of Commons, soooooo delicious! I would go there every day if I could.

Larimer Square, lovely old buildings.

Our hotel was in the tech center, for the tournament, so I had to hop on the rail to get anywhere near where I wanted to be, but by the end of the visit, I was a pro! It must be nice having a rail system like that- in Austin there's only one rail, goes from north-north-north Austin to downtown, and that's it, one rail. I was impressed by how easy it was to get around Denver! There are some places I'd like to explore further, but I wanted to get back to the hotel by the time the games ended each day. 

It's good to be home though. Missed printing. :)

Cheers,
ashley

Playing Hooky

If you follow us on instagram (@shopinviting) you probably saw that I played hooky on Friday. My friend of 22 years was in town for ACL and since her husband wasn't able to make it, I took his place.

You can't say no to that. Really.

The Cure on Saturday, from approximately the 4th row. Amazing.

You can read more about my crazy-fun weekend at my personal blog HERE.

Hope your weekend was as fun as (and less sunburned than) mine!
Cheers,
ashley 

Commercial Letterpress, Sort of

While they're not really new, I first noticed them earlier this year on CNN while at the former Day Job, and they're way older than that, I like the Dodge Ram commercials- the way they end at least.

So really the letters would be backwards, but still. It's a "cut" and type locked in a chase. (Not very efficiently- why have 2 high-speed coins on the left side, and another coin loose in the top right corner?, but I'm picky.)

It makes me happy.

Cheers,
ashley

Weekend Work

Saturday was such a nice day. The morning was spent in the print shop, printing 2 of the 3 colors for our business cards, and throwing in some pink frogs for fun:

Worked briefly in the garden, pulling TWO red tomatoes off the plant- very exciting:

And spent much of the rest of the weekend watching movies with T & working on a cross-stitch project.

It's a photo of Dita von Teese that I scanned and had a pattern made from.
For the dressing room, assuming I ever finish it.

Don't forget about the Craft Party on Saturday! Bring a blank shirt and you can get it screen-printed, too.

See you there!

Cheers,
ashley

It's Friday!!!

That means two wonderful things here at inviting HQ:

1 - Tomorrow's printing day! Business cards and stationery are a must for the shop, but then what else? Well, we have a new frog image that I think needs to be orange... We'll see what happens when the rollers are inked.

Yup, definitely need more of these. We are out!!

2 - Tonight is PROMETHEUS. If you know me, you know that Aliens is one of my very favorite movies. We recently re-watched Alien and i really enjoyed it (as did our evil siamese cat- she stared at the tv the entire time it was on!), and have been eagerly awaiting Prometheus since the very first trailer. Noomi Rapace cries that "we were wrong, we were very wrong" or whatever, and i want to cry back "what did you doooooo?!"

picture from imdb.com / 20th century fox

So today is going to be long and slow, but tonight fun, and tomorrow inky. Yay!

What do YOU have planned for the weekend?

Free Crafty Fun!

The group that we're a part of, Austin Craft Riot, is hosting a craft party on June 16th. I missed last year's but will be at this one! Mark your calenders to join the fun. (Details on the image below.)

Fun Things to Share

Spotted this week on the trail, someone took the time to make little stone stacks. It's not the best picture, but I think you get the idea.

Also, on the trail yesterday there was what looked like a bicycle-pedestrian collision. I missed the collision but saw the aftermath- two young men laying on their backs, a small crowd of people, and two people assisting one of the guys who was injured. BLOOD ON THE TRAIL. Not something I ever want to see again. Somebody was already on the phone with 911 and very shortly after, I heard the sirens. I hope they were okay, and everyone, please be careful out there!

On a happier note...
Some of the ladies at the Day-Job have been going on about the recipes on this blog. On Sunday, I made a macaroni & cheese, and added some honey-jalapeno rotisserie chicken, and an extra handful of cheese. YUM. (If you've got a great mac and cheese recipe, please share it/the link.)

Are you paper-obsessed? I am (obviously)!
Here are some of my favorite paper/stationery/letterpress blogs. Enjoy!!
 : Beast Pieces - Studio on Fire is a studio in MN and they are INCREDIBLE. I mean, WOW. Totally inspiring.
 : Boxcar Press - They are the awesome people in NY that make our polymer plates. Their blog is a great mix of how-to / tips, meet the printer, and letterpress love.
 : Paper Crave - If you aren't reading this yet, you are missing out. I get their daily emails and am always impressed with the work they select.
 : Oh So Beautiful Paper - It's a new one for me and I absolutely love it! Similar to Paper Crave in their obsessions, plus some lovely non-paper related postings, but every bit as worthy of subscribing.
 : This is Glamorous - Not really paper-related, though I have spied some great cards every now and then, this is just one of my happy places. I want to live inside it.
Am i missing any? Let me know if i've been missing out on anything.

Have a wonderful day!
Cheers-

Fun Things to Share, Yay!

Here are some fun things I had to share:

~ Illustrated guides to eating dinner & drinking wine from A Cup of Jo

~ Maybe you've done some strawberry picking? I totally recommend this recipe from Joy the Baker.
Here's mine (sans cardamon):

So yummy!!

~  Remember when you were 12 or so, and you had those 10-color pens? Except they were a P.O.S. and the ink was crappy and the barrel always broke? Well, I found a couple multi-color pens on amazon (purchased for french vocabulary lists, not notes to friends sadly) and they don't suck! Here and Here.

~ Trying to work in more exercise, but sometimes I get distracted by the prettiness on the trail. How could I not?

~ For those of you in a shopping mood, more petite packs (3-5 cards/set) have been added to the shop! Burnt orange flourishes, pink chandeliers, etc. Good stuff. Will make a great Mother's Day gift.

~ Yes! Mother's Day is coming up! Sunday, May 13th. But don't buy your card just yet- ours will be printed this weekend and I'll have them available on the shop as quickly as possible. I'll let you know!

Enjoy the rest of your week. Cheers!

inviting's "new" toy

Happy Halloween!