Back to our {new} regular programming

give, invite, gather inspiration: {hostess of the week}

We're excited to introduce our regular feature. Each week a new hostess (or host, come on, boys!) will be featured and answer our Q & A, providing inspiration, tips, ideas and perhaps a dose of reality about all things giving, inviting and gathering. We'd love to feature you, too! Just e-mail Jenny or Carolyn with your answers to the Q & A below, and please include a photo of the table where you entertain most often.

To get the ball rolling, I've interviewed myself. Sorry for the tiny photo, it's from my phone! Next week Carolyn will be featured, and then...stay tuned... we've asked many of our talented friends to join in.

The table: Table with one leaf from IKEA, seats up to 8.

The chairs: From IKEA and very comfortable as long as you're under 6' tall...which my husband is not

Lighting: Pendant with drum shade from Restoration Hardware. It gives off very nice, soft light.

Favorite table decor: None usually, but if I have some flowers, I put them in orange juice glasses down the middle of the table with some votives interspersed.

Last time I entertained, I served: Indian food: a dal, chicken vindaloo and raita

How many people? 15, 8 adults and 7 children

Last minute or planned in advance? Last minute. We called a few friends and then a few more stopped by, and next thing we knew, we had a party! I love that kind of spontaneity.

Go-to recipe when in a hurry: Spicy Grilled Greek Chicken with Yogurt Sauce and Pitas. The recipe is from "Wine Bar Food" another favorite cookbook (see below).

Favorite cookbook: It goes in spurts, I have a new favorite every week. Right now, I am using Hot Sour, Salty Sweet a lot, as I am hung up on Thai food.

Invitations: printed, hand-written or e-mailed? When I plan far enough in advance, printed invitations from hen and barley, of course, but usually I am pulling things together last minute, so phone!

Best entertaining tip: Don't feel like everything has to be prepped before people arrive--people like to help and it gives everyone something to do if conversation is slow.

When I'm not entertaining, I am: Running hen and barley press, running around after Henry, Charlie and Teddy, and reading.

We're moving!

Hello, everyone! It's been a while...I hope you are all still out there. The big news here is that we're restructuring our operations and next week will be moving into some new space, all under one roof here in Chicago. We're excited, but all the preparations for this move have obviously resulted in no blog posts for a long time!

Our offices will be closed next week, re-opening on September 16, so we can get everything moved and organized. Any orders placed next week will be filled promptly on or after September 16.

Moving is hassle, but one thing I love about it is that it forces us to really clean house. In honor of this, we're having a little moving sale through October 31 for our dear retailers: 15% off all boxed and bulk imprintable invitations and notecards, and $10 off our Completely Custom display. Now is the time to stock up on some of our darling designs like the one you see above. And, if you live in the Chicago North Shore area, stay tuned because we're going to be hosting an open house/fall clean up sale in October, and there will be some great deals!!

Thanks for your patience and we promise to be back with a new blog schedule by the end of September.

meet hannah!

Good afternoon to you all! It is rainy here in Chicago today, the perfect time for an introduction to our Semi-Custom line's Hannah: Hannah is a natural beauty, your go-to girl. Everything she wears looks instantly new, now and effortlessly chic.

Everyone knows a girl like Hannah. The classic beveled text box on this layout makes it your "go-to" layout, the one you can't go wrong with no matter what swatch you use, and every swatch makes that beveled box look new, now and effortlessly chic. That's Hannah.

Now here's Hannah in other swatches on folded notes, invitations, labels, calling cards and photo cards. Irresistible, right?



Drop us a line to order this fabulous program--either as a new retailer for both Completely Custom and Semi-Custom, or as an add-on to your already fabulous Completely Custom easel.

meet suzy!

Today we're pleased to introduce Suzy from our Semi-Custom line. Suzy is classic with a dash of the exotic. Her house is filled with things that hint of time spent in far-off places. She is the one to have at dinner parties.

Note how the Suzy layout gives everything a clean, contemporary look, but without being too modern. And how cute is Suzy in a different pattern? Can't you just picture matching gift labels for a little boy?

give, invite gather: the girls

We are thrilled to give you a peek at our soon to launch Semi-Custom line. Semi-Custom lets you apply any of 35 of our most popular imprintables swatches to 4 different layouts, called collections. Each collection represents a distinctive layout style that changes the look of any swatch to suit your mood, taste or event. Collections offer the same 6 products: invitations, folded notes, photo cards, calling cards & 2 label styles, all personalized and made to order.

To help translate each collection's signature style, we gave them a name and a personality. They're our "girls", and they'll help you and your customers give, invite and gather with style. So, let's make some introductions!

First, meet Olivia, shown below in swatch #500. Olivia is a big city girl who throws great cocktail parties and loves fresh flowers all over her apartment. She is, above all else, fun. Can't you just imagine her?



And here is the Olivia collection invitation shown in swatch #520. A different swatch changes the look while retaining Olivia's innate sense of style.



After the holiday weekend, we'll introduce you to the rest of "the girls". More info on the Semi-Custom/Completely Custom easel program here.

gather: your thoughts

Here it is, July 1, and already the "need to get organized for the school year" feeling is settling in. As forms for preschool, middle school, sports, etc. arrive in the mail daily, I am overcome with a need to figure out how to keep track of it all, how to remember to get everything done while still enjoying summer. I must not be alone, as here in the office we're seeing an uptick in orders for our personalized desk calendars, shown above.

From our Completely Custom line, these calendars are not your average calendar. As with all Completely Custom items, you can customize your calendar with the design of your choice, in the colors of your choice and the font and font color of your choice! And, the calendar can start in any month. How great is that?!? Many we've sold lately start in August or September. The result is a calendar that reflects your style and your schedule and at 11" x 17", is large enough to double as a desk blotter.

One of our customers--also a good personal friend--bought one for her darling pre-teen daughter. She said her daughter immediately went to work with her pack of markers, marking important dates in a variety of colors that coordinated with her calendar's design (she went with a different design in pink & brown--so cute!). The calendar sits on her daughter's desk, matching her bedroom decor perfectly!

So, if the impending beginning of the school year is weighing heavily on your mind, we invite you to pick up a personalized calendar (and maybe some matching notesheets, too) and you will at least LOOK more organized than ever!

Hello! Allergies + Asthma + Bronchitis = long time no see

Hello, everyone! I apologize for the LONG delay since our last post, especially since we have some more fabulous NSS round up items to share. My usual spring allergies morphed into an asthma attack, which then turned into bronchitis, all during my kids' last week of school. If you have kids, you know what "last week of school" means: picnics, teacher's gifts, end of year concerts, final sporting events, and the list goes on. Frankly, it exhausts me every year, and I think it does the kids in, too! At any rate, it has taken me much longer than I expected to recover from all this and I am just now feeling somewhat back to normal.

But enough about boring illnesses! There are more exciting things to discuss, namely, the continuation of our gathering of our NSS favorites. All of today's items fit into our favorite category of things that are chic, nice to look at, and useful to boot, and they are especially timely for summer.

First up are custom melamine plates from our friends at Fontaine Maury. Yes, yes, there are plenty of custom plate lines out there, but believe me, Fontaine Maury is the last word in chic custom plates. With more than 250 designs to choose from, there is something for everyone in your family, or to match your decor, or whatever other criteria might float your boat. Visit the Fontaine Maury website to find out where you can get your custom plates before your next summer gathering (and wouldn't a custom plate be a FABULOUS summer hostess gift or birthday gift? I'm just sayin'...).


Next are disposable coasters from Whitney English. When you think of Whitney English, you may think of invitations, or note cards, or note sheet sets, since those are the things that established the company in the stationery industry. But now, the Whitney English team is using their considerable powers of design on useful household items like these coasters. And the designs are chic but timeless, so if you don't run through all that you buy this year, they won't look been there, done that when you pull them out again at a later date. Personally, I want these stacked all over my house, not because I am worried about water rings everywhere (I have three boys, so I got over that one a while ago), but because they look so great, especially with that bold intial in the center. Love 'em!



Finally, from the department of shameless self-promotion we want to share some fantastic Completely Custom items we've done recently. These showcase all that there is to love about our Completely Custom line: for a 4th of July party invitation, our Sparkler icon in navy & red, plus our lattice perimeter border in navy & white, plus a fun font in red makes a smashing July 4th party invitation. Take that same perimeter border in lime & peony, and pair it with grad caps in the same colors, and you have a festive, feminine Grad Party invitation (with darling matching address labels). It is so easy to get exactly the look you want with Completely Custom!