One Last Plea.... for your photos!

Hola Friends! 

As some of you know, I just recently put together a wedding photo album with all of our professional photos (see the previous post).

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty excited, and I can’t wait for it to arrive. I think I may spend the first three days of possession just going through it again and again.

We also want to make a photobook of the candid photos taken on the wedding day (and including some of the other events, like karaoke, rehearsal and engagement party). But to do that, we need your help!

If you were at the wedding and you took photos, could you please contribute them to our online wedding album?

You can do this a couple different ways:

1    1)    You can email photos to us at: tiffandcurby DOT lovebirds AT picasaweb DOT com.. No subject line necessary, just email them to us as attachments and they will automatically go into our photo album drop box.

2      

              2) You can upload photos directly if you would like – to do that, please email us: tiffandcurby AT gmail DOT com and let us know you’d like to do this option and I’ll send you a link to an album. (this way you can upload a bunch of pics at once)

You can VIEW some of the candid pictures that have been uploaded already at this link: The Story of Tiff and Curby 

Dear friends - seriously, help us out here, and get YOUR photos featured in our memories forever.

(and in return, I promise to blog about Tiff's life very soon!)

Our Awesome Wedding Album!

This weekend I had some free time, and I decided that one thing that would bring me great joy was to work on our wedding photo album. Shutterfly had a 20% off deal on photobooks, and Curby said it was OK if I had a million pages... So I did it!! I actually think we'll end up with a three book series - 1) the wedding album, 2) engagement photo album, and 3) prewedding and reception posed and candid photos.

I love this album. It's 12x12 and has a hard cover and so that feels really fancy, and I can't wait to see how it turns out in real life.  (I know I could have done an actual "scrapbooked" album, and I like doing that kind of thing sometimes, but I was so excited to make it look as professional as our photos look!"
*(removed - link broken)

Fake Baking for the Summer

Nope. I'm not talking about going to a tanning booth all summer long. I'm talking about faking up some popular mixes to be more frugal and have some fun.

The summer is upon me... school will be out in less than a month! Now, my summer is not that different from the rest of my year these days - I mean, except for the fact that I don't have to TA a class this summer, I still have my two part-time jobs (10 hours per week each) and of course that giant paper that I've been working on. I'm hoping to have my data by the end of June, so I'll be back to working regularly on my dissertation with a goal of finishing by November/December of this year.

My favorite activity/craft to do is sewing, but in our current apartment situation, there is not really a place where I can leave a workstation out - and that means that if I want to sew, I have to get out all the equipment and get set up, and when I'm done, I have to get it all put away again. Its not that easy to do and it probably takes 15 minutes minimum on each end. So my sewing has really tapered off since Curby moved in, because when I only have an hour or so to do my hobby, and 30 minutes is taken up by getting set up and put away.... you can imagine that its sort of discouraging. Who wants the set up and take down to take as much time as the fun times themselves?

So until we get that solution solved, my solution is cooking and baking.  With a little planning in advance, I can figure out new fun meals to try and also create some mixes that I can then use as gifts or when company comes over, or just have around in case Curby and I want cookies. :)

On Pinterest yesterday, I found these G.R.E.A.T. recipes for "fake frugal mixes" - basically the author decided that she was going to make homemade versions of those cookie and corn bread mixes. Now, I often make extra cookie dough and keep it mixed up in my freezer, and then I just cut off slices to bake up when I have company or want a couple cookies. But I thought that this was a great way to have the dry ingredients ready to go at any time. I also like that this is a way to avoid a lot of the filler that you find in conventional packaged goods. (especially, since I would not normally make cornbread from scratch, for example) And I'm thinking about doing it for a bunch of different recipes, not limited to just those which are posted below.

So anyway, here's to trying to do things that bring me great joy over the summer - even if that means less sewing and more snacks.

Fake-it-Frugal Cookie Mixes:
http://fakeitfrugal.blogspot.com/2012/02/fake-betty-crocker-cookie-mixes.html

Fake-it-Frugal Jiffy Corn Bread Mix:
http://fakeitfrugal.blogspot.com/2012/03/fake-jiffy-cornbread-mix.html

Finally... I would use homemade vanilla ice cream with this, but.....
Fake-it-Frugal Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream!
http://fakeitfrugal.blogspot.com/2011/06/fake-ben-jerrys-chocolate-chip-cookie.html