Daniel and Jennifer's Wedding

A few months ago, I designed the invitations for my cousin Daniel's wedding. The theme of the wedding had a vintage feel to it, and this is what I came up with. They loved it!

Originally, when we were invited to the wedding, I thought we would not be able to make it because it would be too late and who would watch Mila? I was sad thinking I would miss it, but then it occurred to me that perhaps I could just go by myself to the ceremony and the early reception part and then go home in time for Mila's bedtime. I thought it might just work! I love weddings and I didn't want to miss it!

I'd left Mila home with Jorge before, but never at night and never for a long period of time. At first, I was really nervous, but once I got to the ceremony I eased up and had a great time. I was excited to take pictures with my new camera! I have illusions of becoming a photographer one day, LOL!

It was a lovely wedding! At the reception, they even had the invitation I created on display! :)

Valentine's Day Pic

Hope your Valentine's Day was sweet!

Family Christmas Project

For the last two years, I've been doing a family Christmas project as a Christmas gift. I love making something useful and meaningful, instead of just buying something random that they may or may not like. For Christmas 2008, I made a family recipe book with all of my grandmother's recipes in it. I printed a copy for everyone and they loooooved it! 

For Christmas 2009, I packed up my laptop and my giant scanner, drove down to Miami and spent the whole weekend scanning all of my grandmother's old pictures. I made a CD of over 1,400 pictures of my mom and my uncles and aunts' childhood. I chose one picture for each one and framed it and gave it to them with a copy of the CD. They were blown away.

This year, I've been so busy with Mila, I hadn't really planned anything and then at the last minute, I was inspired by my friend Gaby who made Mila a gorgeous family tree, and thought I could give it a shot. Here's a picture of what they'll be opening up tonight!

I love these projects! I love making something that is useful and family oriented. What will I do for 2011? I have an idea brewing... we'll see next December! :)

Happy First Father's Day to Jorge!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! A special happy first Father's Day to my wonderful husband Jorge. You are an amazing, wonderful, loving father to Mila and such a supportive, encouraging, thoughtful husband to me... I love seeing how much she brings out the goofy, playful side of you. Seeing you two together just melts my heart! I love you now more than ever... Thank you for all you do for us! WE LOVE YOU!

Today we celebrated Jorge's first Father's Day, just Mila and I with Daddy. We had a make-up class pending for Mila's Mommy and Me class, so I scheduled it for today so Jorge could go and participate. Saturdays are usually family days and lots of other dads go too. It was so great for him to be a part of class!!

Afterward, we went home and played with Mila in the afternoon. It was a nice little cozy day for all of us to spend together.

I updated Jorge's little photo book of Mila that he keeps at work and Mila and I made him a card. It came out so cute!

The "Jumbo Daddy" reference is to one of Mila's favorite toys, that we've named "Jumbo Dumbo" and since then, Jorge has become Jumbo Daddy, LOL! What a lovely first Father's Day!

Mila's Birth Announcement

I finally sent out Mila's birth announcements this week. Talk about being late! She's almost 5 months already! Here's how they came out:

Boarding Pass Wedding Invitation

Here's a sample of the wedding invitation that I'm working on for my sister Cindy's in-laws, Chuck and Lori's wedding vow renewal ceremony. They've been married for 30 years, which is practically unheard of these days! They have this whole "Love Fest" theme going, it's so cute! They want to incorporate it into their invitation. Cindy loved my boarding pass wedding invitation that I'd made last year for Cynthia & Andres' wedding, and she thought it'd be fun to make the invitation a "Ticket to the Love Fest." Lori specifically requested coral and olive colors as well as hearts and swirls to go along with the "Love Fest" theme. I worked hard to incorporate all of her requests and here's what I came up with:

(Wedding details have been edited to protect privacy.)

They absolutely loved it! We're just waiting on final wording and we'll start working on production. Can't wait!

(For more information on wedding invitations, visit my website: www.paperpetunia.com)

Coffee Themed Wedding Invitation

Here's the sample wedding invitation that I'm working on for Naya and Bernardo's wedding. Naya was looking for some unique invitations that fit her theme. She and her fiance met over coffee and she wants her invitations to reflect a coffee theme. Here are a few of the designs I came up with for her:

(Wedding details have been edited to protect privacy.)

I was so happy to hear she loved them!! I can't wait to get working on these!

(For more information on wedding invitations, visit my website: www.paperpetunia.com)

49ers Onsies

Since Jorge is a HUGE San Francisco 49ers fan, I've been looking to buy Mila some cute 49ers onsies. Surprisingly, there aren't very many out there and the ones I find and actually like, are not available in stock! So I decided to make my own with clothng iron-ons.

Here are the two I made. Jorge absolutely LOVED them. How cute are they?! One says, "Shhh... Daddy and I are watching the game!" and the other says, "Born a 49er fan, just like Daddy!"

Paper Petunia Invitaion Studio is Back!

Since I decided to stay at home with Mila, I'm planning on getting back into my little stationary business, Paper Petunia Invitation Studio. I specialize in creating custom wedding invitations, birth announcements and baby shower invitations, but I also create invitations for other occasions as well as notecards. I have a little online shop for the notecards and I have some samples of some of my custom work on there too.

I started Paper Petunia in 2008 and I was starting to get more clients, but then in 2009 I got pregnant, and between my day job and the pregnancy, I was so exhausted that I stopped taking clients after my first trimester. Now that Mila is here, I would love to get back into it. And sure enough, as soon as I resigned from my job, started working on my website, I got an online order for some notecards. And just this week I started working on two custom wedding invitation orders for two clients! I'm beyond THRILLED! I'm really excited to be working on invitations again. I looooove doing it! It's really my favorite hobby and I'm so glad to be able to turn it into a job.

So it's official: Paper Petunia Invitation Studio's doors are open! WOO-HOO!!!

Baptism Invitations

Mila's baptism is just around the corner! I designed the invitations for the party and I'm so happy with how they came out!

Now that the baby is born, I'm looking forward to finally getting back to my wedding invitation business, Paper Petunia Invitation Studio. Aside from wedding invitations I also create baby shower invitations and birth announcements. As a matter of fact, I'm finishing up Mila's birth announcements now. It's so much fun! I'm so glad to be getting back into it. I really love what I do. My last wedding invitation project was last year and I finished it at the end of my first trimester. Since then I really haven't focused too much on it, with the new baby and all, but now I'm excited to get started up again.

I still have to update my website with some of the newer projects I've worked on. I can't wait!




When and where has been intentionally blurred out for privacy.

Baby Shower Invites

23 weeks, 6 days pregnant

Here's a preview of the Baby Shower Invitations I made! (For security reasons, I omitted the addresses.)

One is for the baby shower my sister Cindy is throwing me. It's nesting themed and has a little bird at the bottom, with the little nest at the top -- there will even be a little sign that says "About to Hatch." Everything will be bird and egg related! So excited!



And the other is for the shower my family is throwing me the following week. This one will be teddy bear themed. I was hoping to get pink gummy bears (my favorite!) for the favors, but it doesn't seem like they sell them only in pink. Oh well - I'm using pink and brown m&m's so it'll still be cute!



Can you tell I love the pink and brown combination? LOL! It's the same color scheme I had for my wedding!

My good friend Beth is also throwing me a shower with my coworkers, and one of the other designers on my team, Sara, is working on the invites... I haven't seen them yet, but I know they're going to look great! :)

I'm so excited for my showers!! YAY!!! :)

Personalized Notecards

17 weeks, 4 days pregnant

Last week was my friend Sandra's birthday so I sent her some personalized notecards that I made. I featured her adorable dogs Molly (a boxer) and Willy (boston terrier). The cards came out so cute!! I love designing these! :)

Cynthia's Wedding Invitations

6 weeks, 4 days pregnant

As you know, I started my little side-biz doing wedding invitations. It's really my dream job and I absolutely love it!

These last few weeks I have been working on a wedding invitation set for a wonderful couple, Cynthia and Andres. When I met with her initially, she had no specific ideas of what she wanted, only that she wanted something different and unique that really represented them. She told me how she and Andres love to travel and how they were recently in Europe. It inspired me to create this adorable travel wedding theme invitation set. It features a wedding invitation in the form of a ticket with it's complimenting ticket jacket. It also comes with an RSVP postcard with the same theme. She also ordered custom wedding stamps. It's so adorable!! I had also designed a passport ceremony program for them as well as luggage tags as the place cards. She absolutely loved my ideas! And after a few weeks of production and assembly, I finished the invites a few days early and I drove them down today. Cynthia absolutely loved them!! And her fabulous wedding planner Sandra (who helped plan my wedding as well) loved them too! I was thrilled!! I was so excited to give Cynthia the finished product!

Oh, how I loooove weddings!







Here's a beautiful picture of the invites taken by the couple's photographer Juan, from Hera Studios Photography. (Click to see larger.)