Family portrait

There is an art taking a great formal portrait. I've always gone for the relaxed, fun, candid moment, but I love the cool, formality of this photograph. And the yellow! Love it.

{Next Exit Photography}

{From Elizabeth Ann Designs posting about Ellen, Caro, and Pilot.}

Ananda

Beard font

Seriously, hilarious.
{via design-milk}

100% cotton wedding ideas

Cotton is fun and whimsical. I'd love to see someone go all out with a cotton themed wedding. There is so much potential ... get creative!

{Almasy Photography}

A cotton boutonniere?

A nice bouquet?

There is even a line of bridal dresses called The Cotton Bride by designer Chris Cole. The entire line is made out of earth friendly natural fabrics...and the majority of the dresses really are made out of Cotton!

This might interest the "green" bride who wants to minimize the impact her wedding has on the world or even for destination brides (unlike polyester, cotton breathes in 100% humidity).
Plus, a cotton dress can be dyed after your wedding and turned into an entirely different dress.

Ananda

*Sigh*...so pretty

I came across these "70 Amazing Business Cards" over at Fubiz.net. This is just a sampling, so if you like what you see, head over to check the other 66 out! The budgets had to be enormous on some of these, but they are fun to look at and dream about. These are great inspiration to get our Quite Like It brand (and business cards) put together!

Heather

Great season of games

Over the course of five Christmas celebrations, we had the pleasure of playing several games I had never played … This, after I was grumbling about the lack of fun new games.

If you are looking for a fun time with friends, I suggest cracking open any of these games.

1. Last word is my favorite new game. It turned a room of strangers into a crowd in stitches with a few good inside jokes.

2. Set is a game I watched from afar. All the left-minded people in the room, all different ages, really got into this matching game.

3. Farkle was a great time. The math-minded can focus on odds and the rest of us can just gamble and roll the dice whenever it feels right.

4. Mexican train dominos is a good game where you can go from being in the lead to dead last in one round. Everyone has a chance to win.

5. Scrabble is an oldie but a goodie. No cheating and looking at the dictionary between turns!

Great low impact gift wrap

I've been working on a project for the Omaha World-Herald about last-minute, do-it-yourself wrapping. Read the story here!

If it is too cold to run and buy extra wrapping paper, look around your house for cute wrapping ideas like these.

{Photos by Kent Sievers.}

Did you catch the cute photo of my niece?!

Ananda

Searching for the perfect fabric

I have always planned on reupholstering my mismatched dining room chairs to kind of match.

How about some of these fun, 100% organic cotton canvas grown, woven, and printed in the United States using non-toxic pigments print from Mod Green Pod, huh? I've got a crush on all of them.

Top: Atticus, cherry. $39.75/yd
Middle: Glimmer, water. $39.75/yd
Bottom: Bloom, persimmon. $39.75/yd

Ananda

Festive

Here we are all festive at work!

Heather

This is what I'm wearing on Monday

We are having a "festive" holiday sweater wearing party at work on Monday. Here's the tacky flyer we came up with to let everyone know!

I encourage everyone, everywhere to break out their "festive" holiday sweater and wear it too!

Heather

Amazing flourish of paper

Dear Yulia Brodskaya,
I want to be you. I love the bold colors and movement in your illustrations. You combine my two loves, typography and paper cuttings. If you ever sell a print of your work, please, please let me know.

Sincerely, Me

Ananda

Who wants a mimosa?

Let's face it, the word "recession" is a downer. And it is cold outside. And it is only Tuesday.

Fortunately, Pantone has a remedy for all that ails you. How about a little Mimosa in your life? It's bright, it's happy and heck, who doesn't smile at the thought of sweet bubbling orange juice? Mimosa is Pantone's 'Color of 2009.' So, not only is yellow the color of the moment in fashion, it could be the color of our mindset for the new year.

Ananda

What I want for Christmas

It is 3 degrees outside. And that's not even talking about the howling wind. To tear my mind away from all the hard parts of winter, I've been fantasizing about Christmas gifts. Here are a few items that I have been drooling over for a while.

Center: A big convex mirror. I want to feel like I am in a Van Eyck painting.

Clockwise from top left: 3. Nesting Doll set $16 SOLD OUT!, Algal bloom pendant $40, Mad men season 1 $28, Animal portraits by Berkley Illustration $8-15 per print, $100 per original, ABC3D (Hardcover) $14, Perfume by Marc Jacobs "Basil" $68.

Ananda

it's the MOST wonderful time of the year

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is all of the wrapping paper! There's no other time during the year that you get to wrap as many gifts as you do at Christmastime. I like to pick out a couple of papers just to mix it up.

Here are some wonderful wrapping paper designs from Paper Source. I love the goldfish!

Heather

put this on my wish list

A friend of mine who loves to knit passed this along to me. How great and cute is this?!?! I HAVE to have one. If I could knit anything properly, I'd make one myself. Check out orchard street good's store over at etsy to purchase yours.

Heather

Rain, rain go away!

It's dreary and rainy today--but at least it's warm: sixty-five degrees in December! So to cheer myself (and you, if it's raining where you are), I've been looking at beautiful umbrellas. Here's a sampling of what I've found.

1. pare*umbrella - Mod Battic for $65.00
2. Burberry - pink signature check for $275.00
3. J Crew - printed umbrella for $19.99

Heather

I'll get this out of my system now

This is my first post on this blog! I know I was introduced awhile ago but my crazy life in combination with the holidays, vacation and the horrible flu have kept me from posting. I'm here now and intend to post more frequently. Whew! On to the post!

A friend of mine has become obsessed with letterpress recently (she's actually buying one; picking it up in January!) and took me to an event a couple of weeks ago at Gilah Press + Design (who did the design shown above) here in Baltimore. Since going to the event, I'VE become obsessed with letterpress--hard not to! Everything looks so beautiful on letterpress and it feels so authentic. For some reason it feels more personal. This makes it a perfect option for wedding invitations. Which is why my new goal in life is to buy a press and start doing our invites on it. We'll keep you updated, but I just had to get this out of my system!

Heather

Election illustration

Look at this image and tell me what you see.

If you answered democrats and republicans than you may have a case of political overload!

(Illustration for The Hartford Courant)

Happy Halloween

Scultures by Thomas Keeley.

www.thomaskeeley.net

A video of our wedding(s)

One of the "quirky" parts of our wedding was that we had to legally get married two days before our big wedding ceremony. It was just a scheduling SNAFU and made for a memorable week.

Here is a video we made for my best friend, Sara, who is in Japan and couldn't make it to Omaha in time. Pardon the abrupt ending, but our camera ran out of tape (doh!).



Oh, and you get to witness the Internet debut of my niece, Zayza! Isn't she gorgeous?

Quite Like It just kicked it up a notch

I am thrilled to announce that this little blog is growing up. I am teaming up with my good friend and amazing designer Heather Winkel to start a little design business.

Heather and I have been friends since college. She has an amazing sense of style, both in clothes and graphic design. She started out as a designer at the Baltimore Sun and now works for the design firm Network Media Partners, Inc.

Together, we will be creating custom wedding invitations and developing a stationary line. You'll start seeing blog posts from the both of us about weddings, design and life.

Welcome, Heather!

Our flowers

Our florist, Barry Beard is a genius and a good friend. I didn't worry about the flowers at all because I knew they would be brilliant, no matter what. I did fantasize about them and in my head they were strikingly black and white. Maybe half black, half white with great black and white ribbon. I told Barry about the black and white idea and he agreed to keep that in mind.

I was right, the flowers were all breath-taking, thoughtful (he incorporated vegetables in some of the arrangements to honor my grandmother!) ... but they were anything but black and white.

Everything borrowed, everything blue

I didn't put much effort into seeking out things old, new, borrowed and blue ... but offers were flowing in from everywhere of old, blue trinkets to borrow. A family friend offered her veil, though I had my heart set on making a birdcage veil. My aunt Mary brought a hankie for me to carry down the aisle, but in the hub-bub I forgot to take it. My aunt Janet offered blue jewelry, but I had already borrowed my bling from two other people.

I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of help and support from everyone we know. I feel like my whole wedding was borrowed and I am happy to spend the rest of my life slowly returning the favor to everyone.

In short:
Earrings, brooch, bracelets = old, borrowed.
Dress, bouquet = blue, new.

Thank you, everyone!

Seeing each other for the first time

Schedule-wise, there was no way that I could avoid seeing my husband before the wedding. While the tradition is cute, a sunset wedding doesn't leave much time for post-nuptial portraits. Instead, we arranged to meet each other, all dressed up, in the middle of the day. Our photographer did such a great job of capturing our reaction. It was a really fun part of the day.

Wedding reception photo booth

One of the best decisions of our entire wedding was having a photo booth area set up at the reception. The photographer set up lights and a camera in a corner and left a bucket of fun costume props. The wedding guests did the rest. People who normally wouldn't have been photographed are now in some of the cutest snapshots from the day. Groups who knew each other were able to snap a portrait.

If it is possible, you must have a photo booth at your wedding!

Wedding day weather forecast

Lets talk about the weather, shall we?

Forecasters be darned, there is no way to predict if there will be rain at your wedding. A month out, I started checking the predictions and I was promised dry and sunny. A week out, I began to watch the news obsessively to see the forecast. On Monday there was a chance of rain for Saturday but by Wednesday they said the storm would move to Sunday. Feeling safe, I stopped watching the weather.

Saturday morning it rained and I mentally cursed all time and effort I had put into watching the weather. The rain soon stopped and we had a lovely, overcast, cool day. The clouds blocked my sunset ceremony but I am thankful that we were still able to hold it outside ... since our back-up plan probably was not feasible.

In short, have a back-up plan that you love just as much as the idea of having an outdoor wedding. Wedding photos with umbrellas are always stunning, it's just not very pleasant to be standing under one as your fancy shoes slowly sink into the mud.

{photo from jenniferechols.wordpress.com}

Shopping spree

I feel like it was splurging, but we went out last night armed with gift cards from the wedding and purchased a few items that we have wanted for a long time.

1. Cute pillow for our cute couch from Target
2. Coasters from Bed Bath and Beyond
3. Nice knives that Ben has been drooling over from Crate and Barrel
4. Flannel sheets for the winter from Target

My new favorite cake

It is a good thing that the wedding is over and done with because I just fell in love with a new cake. I loved my cake, but this one from Amy Atlas Events is just drop dead gorgeous.

Maybe I just need to throw myself a huge birthday party as an excuse to order a cake like this one.

The first photo

Our amazing photographer, Alyssa Schukar, posted a couple of our images on her blog. Check her out. fstopgo.blogspot.com

We wanted a stereotypical Nebraskan fields backdrop for our wedding portraits and this is what she came up with. No one would guess that we are on the edge of a parking lot next to a light post.

More to come soon!

Whirlwind

Flew home to Omaha.

Got married in Omaha.

Flew back to Hartford.

Put in notice that I will be quitting my job in Hartford.

Busy making plans to move home for good! Omaha, here we come.

Boy is my face red. No, really.

Before work, I ran a few last-minute errands, including visiting the tanning salon for the last time before I fly home to Nebraska. I don't normally tan because my skin is so fair, but I figured I should try to be a little darker than my white dress.

Much like the last chance workout on Biggest Loser, the guy at the salon made sure to maximize my last few minutes in the tanning bed ... which included using the 'tingle lotion.' I won't go into the background of why tingling is a good thing for tanning ... all that matters right now is 'tingle' really means 'turn bright red for an hour.' Bright red. Fourty days in the desert red. Ripe tomato in the middle of an office building red.

So here I sit. At work. People doing double-takes and asking if I am ok every few minutes. Red.

Jeez.

Image Source

Weekend adventure to the Big E

Before it started raining, we had a great time gorging ourselves on fair food at the New England Big E (stands for Big Expo). We had Rhode Island Clam fritters, Maine baked potatoes, Vermont apple crisp and, of course, funnel cake!

It was nice to do something fun since I'll be flying home a week early to do wedding prep.

Walking across Africa

I'm in the middle of a wonderful new release called Africa Trek I. It is the first in two books chronicling one couple's three year walk through Africa. This book kind of chose me at the store and I have been immersed in it ever since. Really, I just want to BE this couple.

"Africa Trek is the incredible journey of husband and wife Alex and Sonia Poussin. For three years the French couple walked 8,700 miles across Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Sea of Galilee. During their journey, which they personally filmed, they endured fatigue, extreme thirst, blazing sun, prowling hyenas, malaria and more.

But what they discovered along the way was an incredibly generous place rich with heart, humor and life. The Poussins experienced a piece of the world few of us have ever seen, where time and culture is so different from our own." -www.africatrekseries.com

Smoke with a dash of emerald

I snapped out of the loathing-all-things-wedding phase. In celebration, here is a little inspiration board for you.


Clockwise from top left
Cake by Martha
Yowying gown by Wai-Ching
ring Tiffany and Co.
bouquet Cean One Photography
blueberry mojito from Jennifer Skog
boutonniere by EasterYu
Rose Quartz Bloom by Fuss
mantel from Jennifer Skog
Lanterns from Villa Collection