Thanks!

Here's what's been taking up my time lately...

Thank you notes!
I wanted to make sure we knocked this out fairly early, and I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have a photo postcard.  By the time we got home from the honeymoon, we already had a DVD of our wedding pictures (again, Steve is awesome) that we could use, and we had all our photos from the honeymoon.  I poked around for a day or two and finally found exactly what I wanted on WeddingPaperDivas  (other suggestions include MPix and tinyprints).  I was really impressed with their proofing and editing services...they were super fast and responsive!  

I had them move the block of text on the back from the middle to the top, and it literally took less than an hour after that for them to send me another proof to approve.  I've been writing little personal notes in the space under that...it's still a personal touch but space is limited...so it keeps the process clicking along.  Beau and I knocked out most of the last of them today, before he leaves to go to the US for a few months.  We ordered enough that I decided to send them to friends who just made it to the wedding...that was important to me!  And check out what luck I had getting postcard stamps from our Post Office here in Misawa...

I thought they were super appropriate, even if we didn't go to Hawaii specifically. 

I'm pretty proud of getting these done in just over 2 months from our wedding!!!  

Registering

While I continue to refuse you re-caps (first world problems...I've still got some angst over how certain things went), let's talk about gift registries!  As a result of living on our own for about 6 years (post-college), Jason & I both had about enough household items to function.  There were definitely things we had doubles of and things we could upgrade, but we were fairly content with what we had.  So we decided to make a honeymoond fund our primary registry.  Originally, we went with SmartyPig, but I thought that might not be very user friendly.  I then switched it to HoneyFund, which is fairly easy for most to find and use.  I'm about 80% happy with it...here are the things I would warn people about before using it.  1.  People who contribute to you through Paypal don't have to pay any fees, which is great!  What kinda blows for the transferree is that they take a small percentage out of the gift for themselves.  So my friends that thought they gave us, say, $50...actually ended up giving us around $48.75.  Not a big deal, but something good to know.  2.  It says it's free, but they're actually going to end up taking a couple of dollars from your Paypal for it.  I asked about it and they gave me an explanation, but I forgot and can't find the e-mail.  Again, not a big deal, just something people should know.

Our other registries were fairly normal...I set up one at Williams Sonoma (snooty, I know...but I love it!) and one at GiftRegistry360.  This one is awesome because not only did it include the W-S list, but you could add anything to it from any website.  So we had stuff on there from Target (a firepit, a hand vac and a rain chain), and REI (zip-together sleeping bags), and a few other places.  Unfortunately, no one bought those items, but I still thought it was a great idea!  Especially since there's a lack of stores for us to physically register at here.  

Most of our gifts were either cash or off the W-S registry.  Now I'm just eyeing the discounts I can get for the high-priority items...