Freebie Friday 11/30

Travel size sample of Pantene Moisture Whip + $1 coupon
Sample of Maybelline Dream Fresh BB Cream
Sample of Nature Made Vitamin D gummies + $2 (I do not recommend these, they are gross! One A Day gummy vitamins on the other hand are delicious!)
Sample of Fekkai Advanced PrX Reparatives Shampoo, Conditioner, and Mask
Sample of Jergens Daily Moisture Lotion + $1 coupon
$5 Target giftcard (from a dental study I participate in)
Macy's 25% off friends and family coupons
Kohl's 20/25% off coupons

Grateful - Week 4

30 Days  of Grateful - Week 4
#30daysofthankful

Apparently I can't count - on my last 2 Grateful posts I duplicated days 10 and 11!  Had to rearrange some things but fixed it and am now back on track!

    

Day 18. Ikea dreaming.                       Day 19. Comfort food (on a 

                                                             seahorse plate). 

    

Day 20. Sold out TSwift tix.               Day 21. Date night.

     

Day 22.  Coast to coast turkey          Day 23. Tradition. 

day greetings.

Taylor Tickets

As usual, trying to get Taylor tickets was a stressful event!  We got one set of tickets during the presale, and good thing, because the public on sale sold out in MINUTES!!!  (see below)   We had 4 people trying to get tickets online and via the ticketmaster app and none of us got tickets to come up at all!!!  I went to try my luck at the box office, but to no avail :(  The most frustrating part is that there are now tons of tickets up on other websites, like stubhub.com, selling from $300 - $1,000!!!  They really need to do something about the ticket scalpers!  So I am definitely grateful to have tickets, although I would do anything for pit tickets - yes, Taylor has a pit section this year!  She added 2 more shows to LA (so doing 4 total) so I will try my luck again when those go on sale!

“THE RED TOUR” SELLS OUT FIRST SHOWS WITHIN MINUTES

by Taylor Swift on Friday, November 16, 2012 at 1:06pm ·

The first tickets for Taylor Swift’s The RED Tour went on sale this morning, selling out 14 stadium and arena shows within minutes.

Taylor sold out three stadiums: Toronto’s Rogers Centre (sold out in 5 minutes), Detroit’s Ford Field (sold out in 10 minutes), and Chicago’s Soldier Field (sold out in 25 minutes), as well as arenas in Los Angeles (2 shows in 1 minute), Washington DC (2 shows in 5 minutes), Atlanta (2 shows in 5 minutes), Miami, Tampa, Columbus, San Diego and Sacramento.

In response to the strong demand for tickets, the following shows have been added to the previously announced RED Tour dates:

DATE                   CITY                          VENUE                ON SALE 

June 14                Toronto                    Rogers Centre         November 23

July 26          Foxborough, MA          Gillette Stadium       November 17

August 23 & 24    Los Angeles           Staples Center          December 7

Taylor Swift’s The RED Tour will now include 11 stadium stops, for a total of 62 shows in 45 cities in 29 states and 3 provinces in 2013.  The RED Tour will be produced and promoted by The Messina Group (TMG)/AEG Live.

Grateful - Week 3

30 Days of Grateful - Week 3
#30daysofthankful

 

Day 12. Holiday treats.               Day 13. Softest ever pajama pants.

                                                 

 

Day 14. My morning drive.          Day 15. Sea World field trip day.

Day 16. Freebies.                          Day 17. The small things. 

Grateful - Week 2

30 Days of Grateful - Week 2
#30daysofthankful

     

    Day 6: My right to vote.                   Day 7: Collections of favorite 

                                                            things (books, bottles, sand).

          

  Day 8: Surprises from Rob.                Day 9. Green tea lemonade
                                                             with strawberry, 2 splenda,
                                                             light ice.



    

    Day 10. New ideas.                         Day 11.  Sunday mornings.

Freebie Friday 11/16

Lots of coupons for the holidays in the mail the last few weeks!
Hallmark - $5 off $10
Bath and Body Works - $10 off $30 and free item with $10 purchase
Target - $5 off $50
Tommy Bahama - $50 off $100 (in past years this was $50 off $50)
Kohls - 15% off and $10 off (can be used together)
Old Navy - 40% off, $15 off $50, $30 off $100

Freebies:
Green Mountain Coffee Wellness Collection K-Cups - 3 packs of 4 + $3 coupons
Sample size box of Bear Naked cereal + coupon
Purex Ultra Packs sample + coupon
Target sample bag - Target puts these out a few times a year now, I think I have 3 or 4, and they are one of my favorite samples ever!  You get a cute makeup bag filled with beauty samples, like shampoo and makeup, plus a whole booklet of Target coupons, which can be stacked with manufactures coupons - trust me, it's very exciting!

Table Names

I wanted something other than just numbers to tell our guests which table they were at - ideas that we considered were: 

1. Pictures of the bride and groom at different ages:

2. Names of places you've been together/places that are meaningful to you:

3. Names of beaches/islands:

4. Song lyrics:

We ended up going with number 4, Song Lyrics!  For us this made the most sense, as it really brought together our beach/music theme (see our fish/music note logo from last week's post on our invites!).  The hard part was picking the songs/lyrics - I wanted the title of the song to relate to love/weddings somehow, and the title had to be in the particular lyric we chose - which is harder than it sounds! (scroll down for a full list of all lyrics we chose)

As for displaying them on the tables, we used these great frames from IKEA - they are double sided, stand up on their own, and cost 99 cents each!!!  I just printed the lyrics out on different shades of blue cardstock from Michael's (2 of each lyric for the front and back of the frame) - I made the title of the song all capitals and larger than the rest of the lyric so people could more easily find their table (I also ended up giving in and putting sticker numbers on the frames, so each table had a name and a number in case some guests were confused by the table names).  Then I (well, actually Rob's mom did this part, thanks Elaine!) cut out the lyrics to fit in the fames, slid them in, and that was it - done!  

Here are some pictures of the finished product, on the tables at our wedding (photographed by the awesome Alison Kamper Photography)!  

In a future post, I'll talk about all the other things we had on the tables besides the table names. 

Here's a full list of all of our table lyric names:

Tell me am I right to think that there could be NOTHING BETTER than making you my bride and slowly growing old together - The Postal Service

You are the best thing that's ever been MINE - Taylor Swift

Do you REMEMBER THE TIME when we fell in love - Michael Jackson

Can anybody find me SOMEBODY TO LOVE? - Queen

Come with me, my love to the sea, the SEA OF LOVE - Phil Phillips

TODAY is the greatest day I've ever known - Smashing Pumpkins

I CHERISH the thought of always having you here by my side - Madonna

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, love. Love is all you need - The Beatles

Jump, JUMP FOR MY LOVE, Jump, I know my heart can make you happy - The Pointer Sisters

How ever far away, I will ALWAYS LOVE YOU, whatever worlds I say, I will always love you - The Cure

When I fall in love, it will be FOREVER - Nat King Cole

30 Days of Grateful

This 30 day photo challenge on gratitude from positivelypresent has been floating around on Pinterest and I knew I wanted to try something like it for the month of November.  For Project Life, I do not take a photo a day approach, but I thought it would be fun to do a specific photo challenge for one month (in addition to my "regular" Project Life pages).

In looking for other gratitude photo projects, I came across  
Cathy Zielske's 30 Days of Thankful, which you should definitely check out!

I decided to combine the 2 for my own "30 Days of Grateful" project - each day during November I am taking one picture using Instagram of something I am grateful for - some days I am going to use the prompts from the above photo challenge (for instance on Day 1 I did a favorite food) and other days I am just going to photograph what I am thankful for that day.  I am posting my pictures each day on Instagram (#30daysofthankful) and I am going to add the pictures to my Project Life album along with journaling cards.

I've already been at this project for 5 days and I LOVE it!  Here are my pics so far:

                        

    Day 1: Peanut m&m's.                    Day 2: Reefs in November.

   

    Day 3: A warm cat on my lap.      Day 4: THIS.

    Day 5: Taylor Swift cards in the mail.

Just how awesome is Taylor? THIS awesome!

TAYLOR SHATTERS SALES RECORDS WITH 1.2 MILLION ALBUM SALES DEBUT

Billboard reports, “It's official: Taylor Swift's ‘RED’ sold a whopping 1.208 million copies last week in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan,”  scoring music’s highest weekly sales number in more than a decade (since 2002’s The Eminem Show), and earning Taylor a new page in the history books as the only female artist (and the fourth artist ever) to hit the 1 million first-week figure twice since SoundScan began tracking actual sales in 1991.

RED notched the 8th largest first-week debut in SoundScan chart history, and the 2nd biggest week ever for a female artist.

RED, released on Big Machine Records, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (Taylor’s second consecutive million-plus album selling debut and third chart-topping album), and this week sold more than the rest of the albums in the Top 50 – combined.

RED is only the 18th album in history to sell a million units in a single week; Taylor’s Speak Now album is another one of the 18, with a 2010 debut of more than 1.04 million copies.

RED accounted for 19.3% of total albums sold this week -- one out of nearly every 5 CDs or downloads sold this week was Taylor’s RED album.

With RED, Taylor set a new worldwide iTunes record for highest ever first-week album sales, with 565,545 copies sold digitally around the globe. RED reached #1 on the iTunes sales charts in 42 countries, and reached #1 on the national sales charts in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Ireland, Argentina, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia, among others.

RED also breaks iTunes’s first-week U.S. sales record, with more than 464,000 albums sold. At Target, RED set the retailer’s new one-week sales record with more than 396,000 CD sold -- Taylor’s Speak Now album previously held their record.

RED also enters Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart at #1, and now owns the best one week sales total for any Country release in SoundScan history, surpassing the 1.08 million copies sold of Garth Brooks’ “Double Live” in 1998. Taylor now has two of the three biggest one week sales totals for any Country album in the SoundScan era. 

Critical acclaim for RED matches the disc’s sales and chart success, with continuing rave reviews from leading critics around the globe. "She's a lethally smart songwriter and there's this universality that speaks not just to young women, but everyone who wants to find love and has felt heartbreak," Bill Werde, editorial director of Billboard, told Reuters yesterday.

“Ms. Swift has excelled….. now eight years removed from her debut single, [she] has become one of the most important pop artists of the last decade.”  -- The New York Times

“Swift is clearly a superstar for all seasons…..sheer genius.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Engaging….she continues to write ever-more convincingly.” – USA Today

“RED is a terrific piece of work. A portrait of a young artist in full bloom.” – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Swift’s bare-all lyrics are sublime.” –The Sunday Times (UK)

At radio, RED’s lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (which recently spent three weeks at #1 atop Billboard’s  Hot 100 chart), spends its fourth week at #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and is currently Top 5 on Billboard and Mediabase’s CHR chart, and Top 10 on the Hot AC and AC charts. Also, Taylor's single "Begin Again" is Top 20 on the Billboard & Mediabase Country radio charts, and is this week's Airpower title. The video for the song has already amassed over 8 million views online and is on the air in Power rotation. Taylor will perform “Begin Again” on the 46th Annual CMA Awards tomorrow night on ABC.

RED topped the all-genre Top Albums chart at iTunes within 36 minutes of its release last week, and first day sales at iTunes alone topped 262,000 albums. Taylor scored 13 of the Top 20 songs on iTunes, with the song “Everything Has Changed” taking the #1 position on the all-genre Top Songs chart.

Worldwide, RED reached #1 at iTunes on the first day of release in 32 countries, including the UK, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Denmark, Venezuela, Thailand, and Ireland.

With RED, Taylor set the new Billboard record for the most rapid accumulation of 50 Hot 100 hits in history, reaching the milestone just six years and one month after her 2006 chart debut.

Invitations Part 2

Last week I showed you the front of our invites, so today we are going to talk about the back.  One day Rob and I were driving and I looked over and saw a truck with a decal on the back of a fish/music note - to this day I have no clue what it means, but I knew it was perfect for our wedding logo, as it combines my love of the ocean and Rob's love of music - so we took a picture of the truck, had Rob's mom redraw it, and then Travis magically made it digital.

*Disclaimer - our invitations consisted of 1 single piece of paper.  That's It.  Done.  Nothing Else.  No weird pieces of tissue paper between other pages, no separate card for the reception, not even an RVSP card/envelope!  What, you can do that???  Heck yes you can, it's your wedding, you can do whatever you want!  I personally didn't want all the extra stuff because A. it's pointless and stupid  - sorry, just my opinion :)  B. it costs a lot of money  C. it's wasteful.  Instead of RSVP cards for people to mail back in, we simply asked them to RSVP on our wedding website - the only concern we had about doing it this way was that some of our older guests may not have internet access - but for us this was such a small number of people that we chose to call them instead.  You could also include RSVP cards just for those that you think might have trouble with the website.  As for all the other "stuff" that is typically included, it just wasn't necessary for us and I figured if someone was that offended that we didn't use proper wedding etiquette, then they didn't have to come :)  I actually found the exact opposite to be true, as so many people complimented us on our invites for being so personal and unique (or they were just saying that to our faces, haha!).  Pretty sure no one decided not to come because we didn't have 15 pieces of paper for our invitations, but you never know!

Ok, back on track:  Here is the back of our invite - our actual invites had our names and the date as well, but I added that in on Vistaprint, which brings me to printing...

Yes, we used Vistaprint to print our wedding invitations!  And guess what?  They came out great!  Not going to lie, I was a little nervous, but am so glad I decided to just go for it!  I considered printing at home, but after the huge knock down drag out fight I got in with several printers trying to just do the envelopes, I decided it wasn't worth it :)  I uploaded the front and back of the invites and chose premium, 100lb. white matte paper stock.  I also threw in some return address labels.  So for 100 invitations (and envelopes) + 280 return address labels, I spent less than $100!  The total was $74.01, and that includes shipping!  So less than $1/invitation!  And of course I used a coupon code to get this great price - NEVER buy anything online without first checking out www.retailmenot.com!  

So those are our invites!  What do you think, awesome?  Or are you horrified that I didn't include RSVP cards and used Vistaprint???  Haha!

Freebie Friday 11/2

Sample of Centrum Flavor Burts + $2 off coupon
Garnier Fructis Fall Fight shampoo and conditioner sample + $1 off coupon
Always Infinity + $1 and 50 cent off coupon
Coupon for free Jockey panty from Kohls
2 Yogi tea bags - Stress Relief and Bedtime + $1 off coupon

No free food this week, but Emily and I went to a free movie screening of Lincoln, which was really good!  Lincoln seems awesome, if the movie is true to life :)  I love seeing movies early and for free!