Gifts for Camera Lovers

I can't say "Gifts for Photographers" because that would exclude me! While I would never, ever consider myself a photographer, I do love me my DSLR Nikon camera. Since everyone in my family was asking what I wanted, I decided to create a little group of good gift ideas for them to use. Of course, if you have someone on your list who loves their camera too, you can mooch off my ideas. It's the season of giving, right?

Here are the cool companies that offer the products above:
1. Plaid Wool camera bag from MariForssell
2. Fun camera stamp (for cards, wrapping paper, tags etc.) from Brown Pigeon
3. Large printed fabric camera bag from XcessRize
4. Camera strap from OhSoStrapped (I can't resist those Kodachrome colors!)
5. Retro camera print wallet from Coolbeans717
6. Lytro camera from Lytro. You really have to read about this new technology that changes the way cameras work. It's amazing!
7. Retro camera v-neck t-shirt from vital
8. Camera strap from iMo Shop
9. Silver camera necklace from Destiny's Creations

Thankgiving 2011 and last minute floral arrangements!

While last year I was ready for Thanksgiving a week before, this year was a bit different. I thought about it several weeks ahead, but as you well know, thinking and doing are very different things. Especially because I was all about azure blue and copper and frankly, there was little in the azure blue table linen category to choose from and I wasn't about to learn how to sew. I was not the least bit interested in stressing over it so my sister and I went with what we had at our easy disposal: Her beautiful china and a navy blue damask table cloth. Her cherry wood table and buffet were just right for the coppery tones too. Done! Sort of.

I went to see my floral therapist Justin at Findlay Market in Cincinnati on Wednesday. We agreed to use coppery yellow mums, antique hydrangea, some kind of purplish leafy stuff and thistles in the floral arrangement. I nervously went home, wondering what kind of magic I would have to use to transform this group of flowers into the beautiful arrangement he envisioned. My original plan was to use 3 low glass bowls and fill them with flowers but they were at Alex's and I was too anxious to get started to wait for her to come home and give them to me. I pulled out one of my crystal bowls with a tarnishing silver base (tarnished not because I'm lazy, but because I the slightly subdued silver feels less fussy) and started filling the bowl. I did have a moment of inspiration when I saw that the pears ripening in our fruit bowl were the perfect color pair for those mums! Of course I did not have a floral frog because I'd thrown it out after it poked my finger for the last time last summer. And the scrap of chicken wire was not big enough to support the weight of the pears which had been stuck with skewers. I grabbed an osage orange from my expiring Halloween mantle design and stuck it into the bowl. While not perfect, it was a quick fix that worked fine and at least didn't require another trip to Michaels, a place I frequent only on the days the 40% off coupons are invalid. After about a half hour, I was pleased with the final results of the bouquet. My sister Alex confirmed the floral success (the little sister in me still needs this approval, even at 40!) and I have to agree that it did look really lovely on the navy table linens.

Here are a few pictures from the day. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and beautiful flowers too! Maybe next year will be less spur-of-the-moment but we'll see. Procrastination is so rewarding for me half the time that I really don't see the need to plan too far ahead. :o)

Let the gift giving season begin...

Gifted Magazine is a wonderful, wonderful collection of gift ideas curated by Ez from Creature Comforts. When I first saw the link, I thought I would do a quick browse-through before leaving the office for an appointment but I realized very quickly that I wasn't going to be merely browsing the e-pages. I was studying them and taking notes and clicking away to all the links. I'll show a few of my favorite pages here, but promise me you will look through on your own. If you don't, you'll miss the incredibly amazing section of printable gift tags and that would be tragic!

Last year's Thanksgiving table

Thanksgiving really crept up on me this year! While I have the theme and general idea of how we'll be decorating this year's Thanksgiving table, I'm not together enough to get the table set before Thursday and get the photos ready to share. I thought I'd revisit last year's beautiful table as a precursor to this year's, and I will tell you that this year's colors are going to be copper and blue!

Reposted from November 23, 2010
This is what 3 crazy and over-stimulated women can do in an afternoon when they have more on their agenda than is humanly possible (even for a mom!). I've been eager to do a table setting so that I can get more practiced at it. With Thanksgiving coming up, it seemed as good a time as any for my first official project. I gathered a few of my creative peeps on a Thursday and we brainstormed the details. My main inspiration was this photo from Leslie at A Creative Mint (the pinnacle of color inspiration and beautiful photography in my humble opinion):

Not having the time to make a quick trip to Morocco to get the delightful cups Leslie used, I had to improvise. I have some charming pressed glass cups at my house which I use for wine glasses (strange to some perhaps, but provincial to me and no broken glass stems in the dishwasher), and I'd just purchased some silver/gold Alhambra patterned votives from Crate and Barrel so those went into the creative soup. We have Thanksgiving (and most family events) at my sister Alex's so hers was the setting, table linen, silverware, and more. Aren't those flower plates beautiful? They come from Lindsay's room mate's collection of beautiful finds from Lord knows where (and likely some thrift store or Goodwill). Alex and I both contributed all our crystal candlesticks. Karyn (the photographer and creative muse) brought the silver mini pedestal with glass dome, which just was so cute. My point here is that everything on this table was borrowed, begged or bespoke. I want to thank Karyn, Lindsay, and Alex for their efforts and willingness to participate in my creative obsessions--I mean--projects. Everyone is super busy, so this was no small feat to find time and energy to spend on a "fun" project when you should really be wrapping presents, finishing newsletters, responding to charity emails etc. I begged Karyn to get me the 4 photos so I could post BEFORE Thanksgiving and so I am especially grateful. Thank you ladies again!! So without further ado, the photos please!

Karen's silver mini pedestal with a glass dome, pomegranate

Plates with gold chargers

My mini books as place cards. Each guest can write a nice note on the pages inside!

Karen added the gold trim around the glass rim.

Of course, even though we were going on and on about how much we had going on in our lives, we couldn't help ourselves but start planning the next event table. Creativity is a chronic and contagious disease, but you know that because you have the same affliction. Have a great Thanksgiving to you! If you have some creative thanksgiving tables to share, send them my way!

DIY Friday: What the Font?

Ever find something written in a font that you love, but have no idea which font it is? (yes, all the time)

Ever go to a font site and try to go through the millions of fonts looking for it? It ain't pretty folks. Even for most professionals, there are so many variations on variations that it is so overwhelming. (yes!)

Today, a friend of mine sent me this image and hoped that I could figure out what font it was for her. After scanning through my own list of fonts, I came up empty-handed. I'd heard of websites that offer font identifying features and thought that today was the day to give it a try.

I went to this link on the MyFonts website and got started.

First, I took a screen shot of the letters in question. You can do this on a Mac by clicking Command-Shift-4, then selecting the section of the screen you want to copy with the marquis-thing, and saving the image.

Then I uploaded that image as step one of the font finding process. The next step in the process is to review various sections and tell the computer which letter it has highlighted by typing it into the box under that section.

After several of those exercises, the computer listed several fonts that could be close matches. I have to say that I was impressed! I think Holmen Headline and Ambroise are a pretty good match, but I'd have to delve into the italics to know for sure.

I will definitely keep this handy tool in the Margot Madison box of tricks, and I'm glad I had a chance to give it a real try this morning.

Have a good weekend everybody. I'm going to try to recover from a little cold I've managed to catch from my little man this week. Wish me luck.

Have you tried Pingg yet?

Source: pingg.com via Margot on Pinterest

Although I am always on my computer, I was late to discover this great e-invitation website. Pingg is an on-line invitation source that works like e-vites. You can choose invitation styles that are presented by independent graphic designers and use them as either an electronic invitation or have them printed and sent as a real paper invitation. I love that you can choose both! You can also use this site to sell tickets to an event like a fundraiser, and keep track of guests and payments. The cost is free for many styles, and $10 for Premium Designers.

Source: pingg.com via Margot on Pinterest

The really good news is that some of my invitations are being represented and sold through my design group called "A Fresh Bunch". I've got some fun and colorful holiday designs up there now, and as a bonus, I'll be adding party accessories like cupcake and favor stickers, food cards and more on my etsy store. Please note that those are not yet live on my store as of today, but I will let you know as soon as they are. The combination of simplicity and efficiency with e-vites, plus the printable party accessories means you don't have to sacrifice style for price or convenience. It's a win-win, yes?

Coming soon will also be save the date cards for your wedding. Imagine being able to link directly to your wedding website, your accommodations and your email.

10 Songs for your First Dance that you may not know, but should

Well, the title says it all, really. I recall struggling with this aspect of my wedding reception lo those many years ago. I wanted a song that was romantic and had meaningful words. I wanted something different than the usual first dance songs at wedding receptions. So I asked a few of my musically diverse friends for suggestions of alternative First Wedding Dance songs and they assisted me with these romantic gems.

1. The Only Story I Tell, The Silos
2.  Hold You In My Arms, Ray LaMontagne
3. Your Face, Glen Hansard (The Frames)
4. Have A Little Faith In Me, John Hiatt
5. Magic In The Air, Badly Drawn Boy
6. First In Line, Mathew Mayfield
7. Breathe, Eddie Vedder
8. Your Company, Marketa Irglova (This video is not great, but buy the song and listen to lyrics--You will not be disappointed! This is on her newly released album and I'm going on a limb here and say that she wrote this song with her new husband in mind. So sweet!)
9. Naked As We Came, Iron And Wine (Having been married for over 13 years, this song still makes me cry with hope and love!)
10. When You Say Nothing At All, Allison Kraus And Union Station


Want more? Kisa Koenig has been compiling a really impressive list of Love Songs, along with the lyrics.

Did you have an unconventional or atypical song as your first dance at your wedding? What was it?

Chess Girl Party!

A few weeks ago my friend and fellow creative collaborator Karyn Hlad Miller asked me if I would help her with the styling of her daughter's party. Of course I would! It did not matter that I was going out of town that weekend and had stuff of my own to do...this is what I do when someone as amazing as Karyn invites me to participate in something creative. I have to say yes!!

Karyn is an amazing photographer and an incredible baker so that part was covered. We discussed the general layout of the party dessert table and refined what goodies would make the table fun, tasty and beautiful. The ChessGirl Party theme is so unusual and perfect for her daughter who loves chess. We made the classic black and white color scheme more girly adding accents of royal purple.

The food...
The party table was covered in a black tablecloth, with purple ribbon across the top. The white streamers are a great way to make the solid black table look fun and festive! Karyn used all black cake stands from her personal collection and used white platters for the other foods. She served lemon cupcakes with chess pieces moulded from white chocolate tinted purple. The cake was chocolate and vanilla checkerboard inside (using those concentric circle baking pans) with a rich purple frosting piped to look like ruffles. She added black and white brownies, "ChessGirl" cookies from Pepperidge Farm and purple rock candy in a jar.

The decorations...
Karyn used the blank frames from my birthday party (I tell you, those frames have made their original $3 investment so worth it! I've used them--what--4 times since June??) to hang on the wall. We cut out silhouettes of the horse (I'm a little embarrassed that I do not know the proper chess lingo of that piece, wait, I think it's called a Rook?) and the queen of course, out of purple scrapbooking cardstock for the smaller oval frames. The center frame was a number 8 and the purple ribbons were added for color and a final girly detail.

The paper products...
My part, of course, was to create the printed pieces of the party. I aimed to create an invitation with a modern but young and feminine feel. I used the overall square shape and borders that nod to the chessboard. The font was a classic Garamond in varying sizes and italics to enhance the flow of the text. The party favors were made with old fashioned stick candy in grape flavor with the tags threaded through. Those could easily have been cute stickers or tags for favor bags too! The printable files are at the bottom of this email and will be available for free downloading this next week. After that, I'll have them on my etsy store.

A fun party game...
Karyn enlarged and printed a photograph of Sophia and cut out crowns to play "Crown Sophia", a twist on the ever-popular Pin the Tail on the Donkey party game.

Thanks Karyn for including me on this really fun and unusual Chess Girl Party theme. All I have to say is, "What's next, girl?"

To use these printables, right click to save the jpg files to your desktop. Then open the files as a photo box in your word (or other program), type your text in place and print.

Behind the scenes at the April Eight Fairy Party

I thought these pictures were cute. April sent them to me after our photo shoot at the Fairy Party. Things don't look too chaotic, do they? ;o)

With my little designer-in-training, Julia

Making things "just right".

In awe of Gina's talents!