More Jewelry for '09

Our latest sparkly additions:

www.whiteaisle.com

Luxury for Less?

I've been planning for quite long time on doing a series of posts on planning your honeymoon, but unfortunately haven't found time to do it! I'm not an expert on planning by any means, but I have traveled quite a bit and have always booked things myself. This has meant an obscene number of hours researching hotels, flights, restaurant and things to do. It's meant finding airlines not listed on U.S. sites to get between international destinations, and renting cars and/or drivers in places you want to road trip through (highly recommended!) I have learned to leave travel guide books in the last hotel stop of whichever trip I'm on to make extra room in the suitcase and hopefully pass along some tips for the next traveler to stumble into that room. I've picked up some good, useful travel knowledge! So why am I patting myself on the back? Because today I found a new and useful tool.

Dade and I are planning a trip to Africa this Fall. Why? Because you have to make the most of your time here on earth and neither of us have ever been. Plus... it's a huge planning challenge which is taking my mind off of other little things in life like ... hmmmmm ... medical drama maybe? Just when I thought that there was no way I was ever going to be able to afford some of the incredible, amazing, jaw dropping type of safari experiences I keep seeing in Travel and Leisure, the mighty google handed me this: http://www.luxurylink.com/. Welcome to my 1/2 price dream!

They have all kinds of travel packages on this site which range from the U.S. to the Caribbean, Mexico, Hawaii, Fiji and beyond. I certainly can't attest to all of the properties listed, but I can tell you that when I took a look at some of the places listed for spots I've visited, they were all top notch and great bargains. They're honeymoon-worthy! I hope you guys will find a great bargain and end up in your luxury cabana with private plunge pool!

Vegas Baby, Vegas

So a few weeks ago I cyber-bumped into an old friend from college on Facebook. Roxanne and I used to share dorm space at good old Emerson college in Boston circa 1995'ish. She was always a blast to be around and we stirred up quite a bit of trouble as a team. She sent me a message last week letting me know that she'd actually ordered jewelry from the White Aisle website while she was planning her wedding. We'd been writing back and forth a year ago discussing a bracelet, and never knew who the other one was. Well... we're back in touch now, and I have to share with you guys some of her wedding photos.

Roxanne and James got married in Vegas last June. Her photographer, Chelsea Nicole was just 20 years old at the time!! Can you believe it? Check our her website for tons more gorgeous shots. They're also planning to get together in September to do a Trash the Dress session. Roxanne wanted to wait a year to enjoy the clean dress.

In the bride's own words.... "I got to be a guest at my own wedding! My husband works in events, all over the world. He directs shows with 20K attendees, etc. When he directed TV shows, they would do wrap parties - so we decided to have more of a wrap party than a wedding. He's the creative genius behind the whole thing. He came up with doing a color palate rather than say, two colors. He brought home a PMS color chart and made me pick 15 colors.

He had the idea to rent out a night club (we rented out Tabu at the MGM Grand in Vegas) instead of a ball room - so smart, the place was already decorated, lit, ready for sound etc. They even had a program that projects images onto the tables and dance floor (that you can interact with, i.e. turns the image to fire or water when you wave your hand over it), so my husband put together a video of our engagement pics and flowers to project."

"We rented out a huge suite at Planet Hollywood over looking the Bellagio fountains with a foosball table and pool table and had our after party there with a late night taco bar, sushi and pizza and a second DJ. "

Thanks for sharing!

The Crappy Post Update

Thanks everyone for all of the wonderful emails. They've been great to read. So, the update... We got to UVA Monday and I had more scans. Thankfully nothing was found on my major organs, but they did find 3 spots which lit up under my skin which needed to be taken out. Yesterday I had surgery to remove 2 of them. The section that showed up on my back ended up being a bit larger and more involved than we originally thought. It included quite a few little melanoma nodes, but hopefully they were able to remove all of it. I'll go back next week to have the 3rd spot taken out which is tiny and shouldn't be as big of a deal.

I am a little sore, but heading home today. I'm just happy that the tumor was accessible and now out of me!! We're going to start talking about further treatment, probably involving radiation or interferon in the next few weeks but I have to heal from all of this first.

I'll be back to work tomorrow. Please hang in there if you've placed an order or are looking for a proof to be updated. I'm hoping to have answers to questions, new proofs made and orders shipping normally by Friday morning.

Best,
R

The Crappy Post

..... deep sigh ..... So, for those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile, you already know all the gruesome little details of my health. For those of you that have not, I have had melanoma twice and am currently in treatment. Contrary to much popular belief, while melanoma is skin cancer which many people can have taken off in its early stages in an afternoon, it can also be super scary crazy cancer which enjoys spending it's time growing and spreading to your internal bits. I only mention this to try to get you to have that mole looked at before it becomes something you really have to worry about! Don't get into my situation.

Every Wednesday I fly to Virginia for injections which hopefully act as a sort of cancer vaccine. Well, last Sunday I found a small lump beneath my skin on my back. It's located very close to where my previous surgeries have been. On Wednesday I brought it to the attention of my dream team of doctor's and researchers who thought we should probably do a needle biopsy just to rule out anything we'd need to worry about. A half an hour later we found out that we're entering round three. There were melanoma cells in the tissue.

We flew home that night and the last few days have been pretty chaotic. I had an MRI and CT scan yesterday. Tomorrow we'll be driving down to Virginia so that I can have a PET scan Monday. Hopefully all of these tests will show that this is a small, isolated node and that this thing hasn't gone nuts and decided to travel elsewhere. I should be able to have surgery Tuesday morning, get back into my normal treatment routine and head back home mid-week. I had scans just over a month ago and nothing showed up, so we were pretty shocked by this but we're also very hopeful that we've once again caught this early and will be able to get back to normal quickly.

We'll be closed Sun-Wed while we figure this all out. Feel free to email me anytime. I have every intention of keeping things as close to "business as usual" as possible. My hope is that this won't impact any orders, but should I take an extra day to get back to you please don't think I'm ignoring you. All orders we've already taken are going to ship on time ... no need to panic. We've made all necessary arrangements to ensure that!

Thanks for every one's support throughout this entire ordeal! It's meant a lot to both Dade and I. We're trying not to stress out about this because in the end, there isn't much we can do about it and worrying certainly doesn't help. I've kept busy this morning getting some new images online of a few straight off the press invite orders (you didn't think I'd leave you without eye candy did you?) I'll be updating the blog as we get more info. Now go make an appointment with your dermatologist!

Best,
R

new square damask letterpress insert cards

gold and petal thermographed Mantilla invitations

magenta and cocoa thermographed Charleston invitations with chartreuse envelopes

Raising the Ink

A couple of months ago we decided it was time to add yet another form of printing to our line. I'd received a lot of inquiries about thermography which is a form of printing which has a raised ink finish (basically a less expensive and less labor intensive version of engraving.) Our first orders are in, and we're really thrilled with the results. The papers are lush and tactile, and the new options of having metallic inks, rounded corners etc. make this a fun project for us. Here are a few new images.

Hot Off the Press

I always get excited when we get to see new invite orders in colors we've never used before, or designs which we've not printed in a particular method in the past. Here are a few new orders I'm in love with today. The first is our Aspen design for the first time in letterpress. The second is the same invitation done with blind letterpress for the imagery, and the third is our Venice design printed in aqua ink. Yum...