So I am clearing off my CF cards, packing our bags and getting ready to head to paradise. Our plane leaves on Sunday but we will be attending a MTG tournament in Indianapolis. Then we are staying the night at a hotel near the airport and flying out on Sunday. I keep praying that the snow will not come until Sunday night when we are safe on our tropical island. I won't be blogging from Nassau since internet cost's 15 cents a minute. I hope you all have a great week and I will put up pictures when I get back!

Well my shipment of 1000 oversized postcards for the Bridal show came today and I open the box and discover that all 1000 have a light grey streak going though the text on the b&w side of the card. I ordered perfection so I called the printing company and they said no problem we will print you a new order! OH my....so I have 1000 perfect postcards coming and 1000 not so perfect postcards sitting on the floor in front of me right now. I am still trying to figure out what to do with these 1000 I have right now. Do I want to hand these out with the small imperfection? It is like someone put a  pencil line from the center of the card trailing off to the bottom center of the card. I would hate potential customers to think that I would settle for anything less than perfection. for their event or wedding. I could hang on to them and have a big postcard bonfire this spring. What would you do? 

Well we are getting packed for our vacation next week and hubby came home on Friday with a presents for us for our trip. He got quite a few Wal-Mart gift cards for Christmas and he picked up two IPod Shuffles, one for each of us, to take with us on our trip to The Bahamas so I spent two hours going through our music library ripping CD's and moving MP3s and getting ready for travel. I really love the clip on but I really dislike the ear buds I am going to look for something different to replace those.

If you want an inexpensive MP3 Player get the IPod Shuffle!

So I revisited some older wedding I have done and played with the archived raw files and worked my magic and made some really great album example pages for my Album Showcase Slideshow That will be running in my booth during the Bridal show and is linked to my website as an example. I know you all took a peek at the website but did you get a chance to look at the Album Showcase Example? Well Click on the links and take a look. I am fairly pleased how it turned out.

Well after many revamps and redos I think I am satisfied for now. I think all my links are linked and all my gallery's are uploaded. Tonight I uploaded the last of the Portfolio callers. I am really proud of my Album Showcase Gallery. I went though all of the weddings I have done in professionally, even one on film, and revamped and made pages of them. WOW am I tired of looking at this screen. Take a look at that and the Sample Slideshow. It has some portrait pictures and babies too. Click on the picture below!

I am a big coupon person. I love finding coupons that when double or tripled by a store give me an item for free or practically nothing. Today I did my monthly trek to Fort Wayne and six hours later I have over $315 of Groceries for $77! Cool huh? I love the thrill of the hunt. For example. Brand Name popcorn regular price 3.15 on sale for 1.66 I had a .40 coupon that was tripled subtracting a total of 1.20 from the total. I paid (trumpet fanfare) $0.46! Yea! I love it. It is somewhat time consuming and takes an hour a week to get everything together and organized in my baseball card sheet laden binder. Then once a month I drive up north to the store that is the best in the world (yea Kroger) and do the majority of my shopping for the month. I get fresh stuff through out the month from local stores but if I have a coupon...  

At the bottom of your receipt it tells you how much you saved at the store so far this year. At the end of my last trip the December receipt said I had saved over $3,000.00 this year! WOW! I was shocked but it really does save money. The average family of 4 spends $500 a month on Groceries.  For a total of $6.000 annually. Now I spend on average $90 with my coupons a month and add the fresh stuff at $200 and  that makes our grocery expenditures $3,480 a year. 42% less than average. I am so shocked at how much this has helped our household. I know not everyone can take the time to do this when they work full time but I am so glad I do it.

Well I put the order in for my postcards today and they got me. That little pop up window said double your order for half the cost of the first 500. What did I do? I clicked yes! OMGOODNESS! What am I going to do with 1000 post cards at a show with a bridal show with only 250 brides on average attending?  I guess they are generic enough I won't have to order any for next year but my goodness 1000??? What was I thinking?

I am printing 2 16x20's for my bridal show booth. I am at a crossroads. Now you all have seen number 1 and number 2 in the post cards and ad selections but number 3 is different. It is not what I would call my best work but it is the pictures their entire family has ordered!  I need to print two. I love number 1 and 2 but  is number 3 something to consider instead of one of these?

Ok here are my final edits! I lightened the rose on the card and I think I got all the grammer spelling and justification errors out of side 2. I think we have perfection people! Yea-haw! Sorry I went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner tonight and there were like 5 birthdays. LOL!

Here is the revised card with some help from my teacher brother in law. Melissa-I think I got all the grammer errors and no I am not offended since I know I have a problem with spelling and grammer I always have. The computer was the best thing that happend to me in High School. Spell Check is my savior. I just wish photoshop had it!

I think this sounds better. Let me know what you think.