Getting Thrifty With It

(cue Will Smith's Getting Jiggy With It - I'm playing it for inspiration)

Addy will be 11 months old next week. Which means she will be a year old in 5 weeks. Which means I need to plan a party!

So, step 1: Invitations. I browsed on over to Tiny Prints, because I like their designs, entered in all the information, and done! So, I mentioned to Pete that I was going to order the invitations, and they'd be right around $40 (about $1.33 per invite). He laughed at me. And told me to just make them myself. So I started to look for free templates for photo invitations, and found a bunch. Unfortunately, they were free to make, but then cost $8-$10 to download them to print. (Plus the photo paper and envelopes, which took me to $0.46 per invite) So that was good, but not great. I was getting frustrated because I knew I could do what I wanted with Microsoft Publisher, but I'm a Mac girl now. Thankfully, I was determined to get what I wanted, and knew Mac wasn't going to let me down. So, I found out that Pages is the Publisher equivalent. And that you can download it to try it for free for 30 days. So, I downloaded Pages, fiddled around and created my invitation, and printed them off. When all was said and done, I made the invitations for $0.16 each! (Just the cost of the paper and envelopes). Not too shabby. "BUT ink is expensive!" I know that's what you're thinking. And it is: $100 for a full set of cartridges, which last a few months. And, 2 weeks ago, every single cartridge was low and needed to be replaced. I have become a bit of a thrifty shop-a-holic, and had decided to give a ink refill kit a try. It was $15, and comes with enough ink for 10 refills of each color cartridge, and 30 refills of the black - so $1.50 for each full refill, plus some extra black. So, I bought that, and set up my little work station with my drill and needles and syringes that you need to refill ink cartridges, and got to work. And I refilled those ink cartridges! I was nervous that the ink wasn't going to be very good ink since it was so cheap, and I was shocked to see that I actually had better print quality with the cheap stuff!

So, I am patting myself on the back for all the money I've saved this week. In my old life, I would have ordered the Tiny Print invites, AND spent $100 on the new ink cartridges - a cool $140 gone. Instead, I spent $30 - and I still have 170 pages of photo paper, 25 envelopes, and a year and a half worth of printer ink.

Not that I've actually sent out the invitations. Be real people. That was a lot of productivity. I'll get to it... before April.

A lot of words, but not a lot of pictures... we're gearing up to head to NJ, where I may get carpal tunnel from pressing on the shutter for the next 48 hours taking pictures of the new baby. So the next post will be lots of pics, and just a few words.

I know this one is a repeat post from last time. But my sisters said that she looks just like our Dad in this one, so it definitely deserves a re-post. We love you Pop!