as seen in Wedding Bells

Way back when...maybe a month ago...we posted a piece about our wedding designs being included in a Wedding Bells article (titled "green cards"), and since then we have received a lot of inquiries about it. The idea behind it is really cool and original, so we can understand why people are interested in it. One thing we like to encourage our couples to do is to try something new. Why not explore everything and anything...and definitely try and see your invitation as more than just a wedding invitation. The possibilities are endless. We designed this specifically for the Wedding Bells article because we want everyone to see how cool wedding invitations can be.

Here is the complete set. Included is a choose-your-adventure novel/library themed wedding invitations, library index card place cards, library sections table cards, notebook guestbook cards and save the date library cards.

did you know i'm a creative well?

So it's teenie here. Creative well, extraordinaire.

I just wanted to share with everyone since I'm sure some of you don't know how much of a creative well I am. (How many more times in this entry do you think I can say creative well?)

The other week we met up with our pals from lotus events, and catching up with them Andrea mentioned how she's going to take a crack at sewing, since she's a self-taught crafty girl. She reminded me how much I wanted to try out my new (as of a few months ago) sewing machine and learn how to sew fun stuff and ALSO reminded me how important it is to take a few minutes out of the week for myself :D

So! I set out to find myself a "Teenie, you, TOO, can learn how to sew!" book and put aside last Sunday to try my hand at sewing. I was DETERMINED to not only conquer my hand-me-down elna, but to also come out with a finished project.


I bought some practice fabric when I first got my elna and decided to use it to test my first ever project: placemats with chopstick pockets. FANTASTIC! Sure, there's wrinkles in the stitching and the first pocket was a little tight but let's see YOU try and learn how to sew all by yourself!


This Sunday: placemats with chopstick pockets...FOR REAL :)

oh and one more thing: creative well.

over and out!

alice, brina and chetwyn hang out

Purchasing the Air Canada Flight Pass was the best decision I made for January 08. I was able to go to Calgary the first weekend and Victoria (Shawnigan Lake) the second weekend, to visit my good friend Alice Young ( www.calligraphy.ca ). We spent most of our time talking, walking, drinking coffee and eating delicious food. That's a perfect weekend to me.

I learned about some new books that I have to read, how to use the apostrophe properly, how SMART dogs can be and how much I miss hanging out with Alice.

NEXT weekend Rod and I are heading to San Francisco! Life is pretty fun.

Our Wedding and Fun Stuff Resources

Slowly over January we will be and have been highlighting some of the new stuff at Blue Skies and Daisies. Today I'd like to mention our resources section, completely renovated and expanded to the point of bursting. It's call The Wedding Season. We have always had a small list of recommendations and helpfuls but now it has become it's own entity...but powered by BSD.

There are a few main reasons for it's creation. One of the reason being, we wanted to provide an inspirational tool for our couples who want to discuss their wedding invitation ideas. We hope it will help pick wedding colours, choose your invitation wording, create a vision for your invitations and maybe even plant more ideas for the rest of the wedding planning.

Another reason being, we wanted to find another way to promote the talented people we have met over the past almost 5 years. This includes all sorts of businesses that are wedding and non wedding related. Options are very healthy.

It's clean and fun to read and every month it will be updated with a new featured wedding, recommendations for upcoming events or celebrations in the Vancouver area...or outside the vancouver area. We don't want to limit ourselves!! So check back often as Teenie and I will be adding more and more and more to this wonderful and free wedding resource.

We hope it helps! That's the super main #1 goal.

Introducing to you: The Little Things

One quiet Sunday in December, my good friend Derrick Belcham, who recently moved back to Vancouver, invited me out for lunch at Liberty Bakery on Main. But of course I would love to!! We ate yummy soup and talked about all the things going on in our lives that we're excited about. Derrick is one of those guys who is amazing at anything he picks up and not only becomes a master of the trade in a day but also has the energy and passion to make things happen. Knowing this, I decided to pick his brain about an idea that I came up with for our Ready2Wear catalogue. And that's where it all began! Drinking coffee on Main...probably not the first time a great idea was born on Main.

Immediately Derrick and I toured the area for antique shops and second hand spots to help inspire us. The best thing we ended up doing was stepping into Urban Source, a recycled and reusable art material shop. The items in there are so random and cool and, for us, perfect.

After buying a bunch of material, I realized there needs to be a reason for this. Our Bunny Love wedding invitations were a hit for 2007, mainly because it's different and you have options for your photographs, so the idea was to create a new "pick your photo" wedding invitation design...with a good story behind it. Inspired by life itself, I thought of creating a bunch of scenes that showed a couple enjoying all the little things they share together...because really, that's what life is all about. During a quick brainstorm session at Wild Rice on West Pender, we giddily ran upstairs and made it happen. It was a night we'll never forget. We amazed ourselves and I was in awe of Derrick's ability to capture the little felt scenes with his fancy camera. I appreciate you, Derrick!!

So here are some shots I took of our arts and crafts evenings...




And here is the end result!


Today I'm pretty excited to talk a little about a new Ready2Wear invitation design we recently introduced. It's called The Little Things.
You can also view the wedding design pieces at: blue skies and daisies

dancing calgary to sleep

This weekend Rod and I enjoyed an evening at the Hyatt, in Calgary, where we attended the FritoLay year end/christmas party for west coast employees and their mates. There are some quality people working for this company and we all took the chance to drink and dance like it was 1892! Such fun!! Letting lose with your co-workers is such a good bonding exercise. Albertine and I should really go out and dance and have some fun together to get rid of the work tension that's building up between us (JUST KIDDING!)

Because we were in the city, we called up our friend Miriam, an old high school pal, to squeeze in some quality time with her and her family before heading home. Boy, do I miss that girl!

I haven't spent too much time in Calgary, but I did notice that the downtown core is really a nice place to be. I'm not sure why, but I was pleasantly surprised by how nice people were and how pretty the streets are....and the fake animals!! So strange! At the airport, in hotels, along the streets, you see these big life sized animals as if they were in a museum. HM! I liked it.

delicious dinner at deuce

To celebrate our new website launch and the fact that we're almost at our 300th couple, Ben, Albertine and myself went for dinner at Deuce Restaurant in North Vancouver. In 07 we helped them out with their opening invitations, so it seemed quite fitting. Since they were starting the Dine Out Vancouver early, we enjoyed a 4 course meal for a very reasonable price and it was SO GOOD. The atmosphere is really comfortable with a warm and retro organic feel to it and the food was so rich with flavour. MMM!

the times are a changing!!

We were pretty excited yesterday when we were finally able to click the "put" button to launch our new fabulous website. We were giddy with joy and i think these 2 pictures convey best what we were going through before and after the PUT moment.

Our first job was to tell everyone about it, cuz we greatly appreciate and value feedback, (THANKS GUYS!) and fix all errors and bugs that are still flying around. But it's up and running and we're feeling a little like proud parents with a new baby site.

Blue Skies and Daisies is definitely changing and getting better every year the world/life allows us to stick around. We've added more Ready2Wear designs and options, resources, friends, questions and answers, details and so much more.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

our new website: www.blueskiesanddaisies.com

the new resource section: www.theweddingseason.blueskiesanddaisies.com

Thanks and good day!

bean looks back on her holidays

Sadly, 2 days before Albertine’s birthday I left for Ontario to spend Christmas with my family, friends and best man. It was a little less than 2 weeks of snow, eating and games. The Schenk’s really take advantage of every spare moment to enjoy a good game of cribbage or yahtzee.
Christmas Eve was spent with my oh so awesome family. Rod got to see the craziness that is my family and he's still with me!! That's good news. A few highlights were Maxwell as Santa and Dwight's Christmas instructions in order to open your present. Dwight made me act out King Kong using my nephews as props. I thought I did pretty good.

We had a really great time with the Brink family (including 3 fantastic dogs) on Boxing Day, which ended with a rowdy game of Pit. Good eats, a little bit of wrestling and lots of nuts.
To end my holidays in style, I flew over to Fernie, BC, to spend New Years with Rod. We had such a fabulous time hiding out and watching movies and just being together.

a whole lot of holiday fun

Wow! Can you believe it's 2008?! Where has the time gone?!

Another year of holidays have come and gone, and again, another year where Beans and I spent it on opposite ends of the country. Missed my bunny terribly, but definitely looking forward to exchanging our fun stories spent with family and friends!

Ben and I spent the whole week on the island with his family, as his dad was working straight through the holidays as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th. Fun, right?

The family decided to book tickets to see the last evening show before Christmas, and we all piled in our cars and made our way up island to see Papa John in his element. It was a really nice way to kick start the holidays, plus we even got the backstage tour!



We stayed with my bff, Kepmen, in his new condo and apart from a few days that he went up island to be with his family, the majority of our "spanning time" was playing tennis on the wii. We didn't realize how much of a GAMER Kepmen was until we caught him addictively playing by himself when we weren't looking! ha ha

marathon wii tennis match 2007

Kepmen opening up his presents from Santa!

Christmas eve & Christmas night was spent with the family, eating and eating and oh, did I mention more eating? It was so wonderful to just spend some quality time with the whole family, rubbing our bellies and laughing about years past. Thank you to Kerry & Tom for hosting Christmas, our bellies and hearts were definitely filled with love :)



We were even able to meet up with my cousin and his wife, who are new transplants to the island. It was definitely a week filled with friends and family and a lot of good times.

The end of our trip was focused mainly on our friends, Amber and Karn, wedding(s). I say "weddings", plural, because again, it was an Indian wedding which meant multiple events and functions for the week. Since Karn is one of Ben's good friends, he made it to a few of the functions during the week, and together we attended the ceremony at the temple, and the following night the joint wedding reception-cum-new years eve party. It was a great night filled with a lot of friends, reunions, love and a whole lot of dancing.

A few shots of the wedding ceremony.

A few shots of the wedding reception.

A whole lot of shots of the dance party that ensued.

By the first day of 2008, Ben and I were ready to make our way back home and start out the new year right (with a serious post turkey cleanse!).

Hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday season filled with as much fun, food, love and warmth as ours.

Happy 2008 to everyone!

love,
teen