Minted.com Discount Code + Our Christmas Cards!

I'm sad to say that my laptop is toast. Merry Christmas to me, I'm getting a new laptop! :-P Not ideal timing, but I don't think there is ever a good time for your computer to go kaput. I'm waiting for my new laptop to arrive so I can transfer my files, so in the meantime, I'm using Dylan's laptop.

I did want to share with you two things:

1. Minted.com has a great sale going on right now, but you'd better jump on it ASAP, because it expires on December 6th! Use the code DEC20 to get 20% off of all holiday cards plus FREE upgrade to 3-day shipping!

2. Minted.com has a cool feature called Find It Fast Holiday Photo Cards that allow you to preview their holiday cards with your picture! It makes it so much easier to find the perfect card for your picture!

I was surprised by some of the cards that ended up being my favorites after I got to see them with our pictures. Here are some of our favorites:





So what do you think?

My favorite wedding planning book.

I just went to the Amazon main page, and it recommended that I buy this book:



Apparently Amazon doesn't realize that I already own that book. If you don't already own this book, I would strongly recommend it. I have at least 50 wedding planning books, but I think that this is the book that I found the most helpful. It's called The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day by Mindy Weiss. Mindy Weiss is an amazing wedding planner. You may have heard of her before, she was responsible for Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi's beautiful wedding. This book contains a wonderful collection of information. It is full of great details, ideas, examples, and recommendations. It also includes lists of questions* to ask each of your vendors, which I found especially helpful. I honestly took either a list of written questions, or this book with me to every meeting I ever had with a potential wedding vendor. I know that a few of them teased me about my organizational skills at the time, but every single vendor at the wedding ended up complimenting us on what a pleasure it was to work at such a well organized event, and how impressed they were that things went so smoothly, especially without the help of a wedding planner or a coordinator. I don't think things would've gone nearly as smoothly without some of the tips I picked up from this book. If you only buy one wedding planning book, this is the one that I would recommend.

* Another book that had good lists of questions to ask your potential wedding vendors was this book: Bridal Bargains: Secrets to Throwing A Fantastic Wedding On A Realistic Budget. This link is for the new 2010 edition that will be released on November 15th. I used the 2009 edition, but every edition of this book has always received great reviews.

I'm ordering our Christmas cards from Minted.com!

Now that the wedding is over, I've started to look toward the future and I'm already getting excited about the upcoming holidays. I can't wait to send out Christmas cards with "our" last name -- preferably with a fun picture of Dylan and me together! Maybe we'll even use a picture of us with our dogs, since that's what we've come to think of as our little family.

Some of you may have noticed that I have an ad for Minted on the sidebar of my blog. I've been very choosy about putting any ads up, because I'm very big on only giving props to companies or products that I would actually use myself. The ladies at Minted are exactly that kind of company. Recently they sent me an assortment of samples of their holiday cards, and I can't tell you how impressed I was with them. Their stationery is lovely online, but it's even more impressive in person.

As anyone who has read my blog will know, I am a details girl. Minted does not disappoint. They have details that I love. Specifically, they have coordinated envelope liners and wrap-around labels available for most of their designs! Even the backs of most of the cards have coordinated patterns. They've thought of everything, and I love that. I also love that they give you different paper choices and color choices for so many of their designs, so you can customize them just to your liking. I'm personally a fan of the pearlescent paper for a lot of the holiday cards I've looked at, but it all depends on your style and preference.

I've spent hours admiring the samples they sent me, and looking at all of the designs on their website to try to narrow it down to some of my favorites. I don't think there's a single one that I didn't like, so narrowing it down has been more difficult than I expected.

These are just some of my favorites:

{clicking on the pictures will take you right to that card on Minted}

{Love and Peace Eternal -- whimsical, folksy, eclectic and unique}

{Celebration -- elegant, classic, and understated}

{Mittens -- festive, cute and cozy. I love both the font and the mittens!}

{Holiday Stripes -- traditional with flair, preppy, a nice balance of masculine and feminine}

{Octavia -- rustic, kitschy, vintage, and charming}

{Woodland Wonderland -- woodland critters with a faux bois birch bark monogram! Love it!}

{Mistletoe Wreath -- artsy, warm, and sweet}

{Reinpet -- what's not to love about your pets with reindeer antlers? And I love the liner!}

{Joyeux Noel + St Nick -- This is one of the samples I've seen in person, and it's a lovely charcoal gray. The liner and label that came with my sample are a pretty muted peach color. You know how I love gray and peach together! I think this one is especially adorable if you've got a cute little munchkin to show off!}

{Delicate Flourishes -- ornate and pretty without being bonk-you-over-the-head 'holiday'}

If you want to go all out, what about sending gorgeous mini-books as your Christmas cards?

My favorites include:

This Airmail Holiday Minibook would be perfect if you got to travel somewhere exotic this year. Maybe you could showcase some honeymoon pictures?

This Peppermint Ribbon Holiday Minibook is a little kitschy, and a lot adorable.

And this Snowflake Window Holiday Minibook is perfect if you want something rich and wintery, without being red and green.

For those brides-to-be who are still in the thick of wedding planning and aren't even thinking about the holidays yet, Minted also has gorgeous wedding stationery, from save-the-dates to invitations and thank you cards. On November 1st, they're launching an exciting new addition of photo calendars that would make perfect save-the-dates, or New Year's greetings for those of us who tend to get too busy during the actual holidays to get our holiday cards in the mail!

So what do you think? Which holiday cards should we send out this year?

Happy Sweetest Day!

What better day to start catching up on my wedding blogging? If you've never heard of Sweetest Day, you aren't the only one. Google it. I think of it as an October version of Valentine's Day, but more simple. It's a day to celebrate the people who help to make your life sweet.

Besides Dylan, most of the people who help to make my life sweeter were present at my lovely bridal shower, so that's what I wanted to share today.

First, the bridal shower invitations:
(I blurred some of the personal details to protect privacy.)

These invitations were the cutest! They're actually from Martha Stewart, and you customize them yourself. They include the adorable pop-up wedding cake invitations, the printable inserts, RSVP enclosures (which we used as direction cards instead), the eyelet lace belly bands, and envelopes. I added the little daisy embellishments, which were also from Martha Stewart.

The morning of my bridal shower, my maid of honor Melissa, my dear friend Samantha and I all went for mani-pedis at a local beauty school.


My mom and her best friend Amelia hosted my bridal shower at Amelia's beautiful home. They put on quite a spread! Samantha made devilled eggs, and my friend Joanna made the fun cupcakes!

My mom has always been quite the chocolatier, so she made tuxedo chocolate covered strawberries. She also played bartender, and made us huckleberry mojitos!

My mom and Amelia both made different kinds of pasta salads.

We toasted with white peach puree and champagne from Ambrosia Bistro -- Yum! My mom gave a really beautiful toast that sent me right into the ugly cry. Thank you Mom! :-P

My favorite girls! From left to right: Bryne, Joanna, Melissa, me, Kristi and Samantha.

And now with our lovely Pink Mustaches for Girls! (I love this picture the most.)


It was the most beautiful bridal shower I ever could have hoped for!

Our engagement session with Matt Shumate!

First off, I just want to let everyone know that I plan to post a TON of wedding stuff in the next couple of months. Our wedding is in just a few days, and wedding planning has just been far too insane for me to blog all about it. We have worked so hard to make things come together, and I am so excited to share all of our wedding details with everyone!

Now I want to share our engagement session photos with Matt Shumate!

Our original plan was to have our engagement session done at the county fair. We thought it would be fun, and there would be built-in props and cool background lighting. Unfortunately, my beloved great-grandmother died a few days before the fair. Since the fair only comes once a year, we were going to try to struggle through it, but when Matt heard my voice he told me that I was way too stressed, and that we should wait until I was feeling more up to it. I'm glad that we did, because (as you can see in the photos), it was a lot easier to smile and laugh than it would have been.

Matt is a great guy, a very creative photographer, and about the furthest thing from a diva artiste as you can get. For those of you who know me, or who have been reading my blog long enough, you'll know that I tend to be very sassy. Matt lobbed it right back at me, and we all had a good time. (Except for the weather. It was gray, chilly, windy as all hell, and rained on us for the last little while.)

Please forgive my windblown hair and chubby laughing face, but I still think the pictures came out pretty cute. I especially like the ones of Dylan laughing, and these:







Please think good thoughts for us this week, and keep your fingers crossed for our big day! 10-9-10 here we come!

Many more wedding details to come soon!

Color palettes are cruel.

I am clearly a big fan of inspiration boards and color palettes for wedding or event planning. Or for home decorating. Or darn near anything.

Months ago I did a post describing what I imagined for our wedding colors. As my ideas moved toward reality, I discovered something important. Color matching for an event is a bitch. Especially if you're trying to do it on a budget. You can have fourteen different things that are described as "chocolate brown" and no two will match. Not only will they not match, they'll clash. A lot.

We wanted shades of brown, and moss green. I had chocolate brown tablecloths that I had purchased on eBay*. I had chair cover samples. I had napkin samples. I had paper samples, because I'm making our wedding invitations. Nothing matched. Not even a little bit. And I had a lot of things to choose from.

I had shown Dylan the samples and swatches as they'd arrived. He'd nod and smile and say something like, "Those look really nice, babe!" Then one day he came home, and I was edging toward a melt down. I tried to explain that nothing was matching, and I was losing my mind. He shifted his weight nervously and cautiously admitted, "They all kind of looked the same to me." And I know that nearly every man on earth would have thought the same thing. It wasn't his fault. I did my best not to stomp my feet and start sputtering. I'm not entirely sure I succeeded, but at least I didn't yell at him. Instead, I rushed around the house and gathered every piece of fabric or paper or anything else wedding related and tossed it all into the center of our dining room table. I spread it all out, flipped the light on, and threw my arms open in a triumphant presentation. Dylan took it all in for a moment, and his brow furrowed. Finally he said, "Wow. It really doesn't match. None of it. It actually kinda... clashes." I take it as a small credit to my character that I didn't start laughing maniacally and yanking my hair out.

Don't get me wrong -- I am not a "bridezilla". I have been pretty calm and collected about wedding planning. It's just that I had put well over a year into researching and planning, and my lofty ideas were suddenly being thrown out the window.

When my color-clashing meltdown finally came, I decided it was time to re-think things. I took all of the things we already had, and all of the samples that we had, and decided to see what might work together instead of trying to make things work with the image I had in my head. As I started looking at everything, I also found myself favoring certain samples. For example, I had beautiful satin pillowcase style chair cover samples in ivory, pale silver, and chocolate brown. Even though it was the least obvious choice, the pale silver was our favorite. The fabric seems a little nicer, and in the soft lighting of our wedding venue, they give this sense of luxury and romance that the other two just didn't live up to.

Early in the wedding planning stages, I was overzealous and purchased some metallic copper crinkle tablecloths. If you look at my first two inspiration boards, you'll see what I'm talking about. They're beautiful, but I was worried that the color would be hard to match things to. I had started leaning toward using brown instead copper, because I thought it would be easier to use as part of the color palette. (Ha ha! Silly me!) That led me to buy those chocolate brown tablecloths**.

We decided to choose what parts we liked best, and then be more flexible on the rest so we could make it all work. We are going to use the copper tablecloths and the pale silver chair covers. We went to fabric shops and found a beautiful paisley fabric that ties the whole thing together. I waited until Joann Fabrics had a 50% off coupon and bought enough fabric to make runners for all of the tables.

So this is a mish-mash of what we've got:

Oh, and Dylan's Ben Sherman suit did not fit him properly. In the picture above, you can see the sleeve of the suit we ended up finding for him. It's a really dark navy, or maybe midnight blue. The suit jacket is two button and looks great on him. Our favorite part is that it's actually a three piece suit! Dylan looks so good in a vest. Plus, he over-heats easily, so it'll be a bonus for him to able to take off his jacket during the reception and still look dressed up.

The bottom line is that color palettes and inspiration boards are wonderful, but don't let yourself get too caught up in forcing your wedding details to fit into a preconceived palette before you explore and experiment with what is actually available to you.

* Budget Helper: I have discovered that for things like table linens and chair covers, I can usually buy them for less than I could rent them. Besides the fact that it's initially cheaper, I love the idea of being able to pass on the savings to another couple while recouping some of your expenses. eBay and Craigslist are both big money savers if you're a savvy shopper. Linentablecloth.com is also a good website if you're considering buying your own table-linens. You can also purchase napkin samples for $1, which is a nice way of getting a big fabric swatch to use for color comparisson. If there is one thing that I have learned from this experience, it is to buy the damn samples before you place a big order. It will save you time and money in the long run, and most of all, it will keep you from ripping your hair out when you discover that one company's idea of "sage green" is what you would have call olive green and another is almost blue.

** Even if you're a savvy shopper, some people are not as forthcoming and honest as they should be. Those chocolate brown tablecloths are not nearly as nice as that lady described, and some of them have stains or wonky hems. I've been cranky about them ever since. So again, if you have the option of seeing stuff in person or ordering a sample first, do it.

Updates: Part 2 - Wedding registry complications

Another bit of excitement involved our wedding registry. Dylan and I have been together for five years. We've lived together for several of those. We're not 20 year olds just starting out, so we didn't have that much that we wanted to register for. We decided that the main thing we did want to register for were nice dishes. Nothing too formal, but something that we loved and that we'd be proud to use when we entertain. We found these gorgeous dishes.

They're part of the Martha Stewart Collection with Wedgewood. Pictures don't do them justice. They have this beautiful texture, like eyelet lace. They come in slightly different patterns so you can mix and match. When I first saw them, I got that tingle that people say you will get when you find the perfect wedding dress. I like my wedding dress, but I love these dishes. Dylan probably doesn't care about dishes nearly as much as I do, but these were also his favorites of the many patterns we had seen. So, of course, they were discontinued. They were discontinued in February. Our wedding isn't until October. That meant that by the time people were starting to think about getting us a wedding gift, those dishes would no longer be available. We were so disappointed!

Thankfully, with the help of a couple of relatives, a good friend, and our rainy day fund, we got our dishes! It took a lot of time and work, and bless the local Macy's employees who went out of their way to help us. We ended up buying or ordering all of the dishes on clearance, during a One Day Sale, with a newly opened Macy's account, so we got an amazing deal at least. I don't think there's any way we could've gotten them otherwise. Every time I look at our china hutch, it makes me happy.

I made us whole-wheat spaghetti with browned butter and mizithra cheese served in our wedding china!

Now that we've purchased a large part of our own wedding registry, we're having to re-think what to register for. We've decided besides the traditional registries, we'd also like to give the option of donating to the ASPCA or the Humane Society since we're both such animal lovers.

What about the other brides-to-be out there? Are any of you registering for something extra special, or unique?

Updates: Part 1 - Health scare

I know that I haven't been a good blogger for months. Things got crazy and I decided that blogging had to take a backseat. There have been hundreds of hours of wedding research and planning. So much planning. There has been work, family, and even a little drama.

I also had a bizarre health scare. I had a pink mark on my forehead that looked like I might have burned myself with a curling iron. It was there for quite a while, and I didn't think much of it. I didn't know where it came from, I just figured it was some little bit of skin irritation, maybe a spot of eczema or psoriasis, or some other skin condition I don't know much of anything about. I wasn't particularly concerned about it. While I was at a dentist appointment, my dentist noticed the spot and encouraged me to get it checked out by a dermatologist. I knew it was probably the smart thing to do, so I unenthusiastically agreed. The dermatologist took one look at it and said, "Yeah, I think that's probably skin cancer." I nearly choked. My exact response was to sputter, "What?! Why would I have that?!" She shrugged and said, "Usually from sun exposure." I continued to gawk at her and squeaked, "Have you seen me?! I'm practically an albino!" Plus, I've had bangs my whole life because I've always hated my big forehead. The doctor cut a little chunk out of my forehead, and about a week later it was confirmed. I had basal cell carcinoma.

I hated my forehead, and it gave me skin cancer!

Alright, probably not. But either way, I ended up with a patch of mutant cells that turned out to be cancer. I had to have surgery to remove the cancer. They basically took a melon-baller to my forehead, then stitched me back up. Now I have what I refer to as my Harry Potter scar.

Hopefully the darn thing will fade more by October, but overall I'm just thankful that if I had to have an experience with cancer, I got the least scary option. Nothing like a little health scare to make you appreciate the good things in your life.

Free Father / Daughter Wedding Song by Edwin McCain!

Life has been crazy for the last couple of months. I know I'm well past-due for a blog update. I'll try to make some time for that soon, but for now I at least wanted to pass along a cool find. This is a really sweet song by Edwin McCain called "Walk With You" that was written specifically from a father to his daughter on her wedding day. I'm sure everyone would be happy to pay a buck to download this song for their wedding, but you can download it for FREE! Nothing beats free!

Click here to listen to the song, read the lyrics, and to download the song as a 320k Mp3, FLAC or darn near any format you'd like.

The groom's suit update

The lovely brown Ben Sherman suit arrived. Dylan tried it on. It doesn't fit properly. Ben Sherman suits are made for more the skinny hipster types. Dylan is not built that way. The suit was very close to fitting, so we kind of held our breath until we went to speak to the seamstress / tailor. The tailor is a friendly, very pregnant Russian woman. As much as Dylan was disappointed by the suit not fitting, I think she at least helped to ease the blow. It was hard for me not to laugh, because she kept patting Dylan's arms and saying, "You have big muscles. That's why the suit won't fit. Your muscles are too big. You exercise?" She did the same thing on his chest, patting his pecs and commenting on his big muscles. I could tell Dylan's disappointment was at least slightly tempered by the pride of having someone compliment his physique. It was cute. Plus, I reassured him that if I had to choose between that one suit fitting or him being buff, I'm definitely voting for his physique.

So we sadly had to return the suit. The suit search continues! Blah!

I'm thinking we may end up heading over to Seattle to suit shop one of these days.

Oooo, speaking of Seattle...! I officially got to ask my beautiful friend Melissa to be one of our honor attendants for the wedding. She lives in the Seattle area, but she was on this side of the state last weekend, so I got to ask her in person.

Our other honor attendant is Jeffrey, whom I fondly refer to as our "dude of honor". I think he's going to basically be the best man, but since I've known him since I was about 14 and we joke that he's my "brother from another mother", we figure that kind of makes him my "dude of honor", too.

We're thinking we're just going to keep it simple with the two of them, since they're the two friends who have been in my life the longest and the two who have been the most loving and supportive to us and our relationship.

I am also very thankful for my lovely friend Samantha, who has volunteered to be the ring-leader for the day. She's going to keep an eye on things behind the scenes and try to help make sure that things go as smoothly as possible. Plus, with Melissa is in Seattle, and Jeffrey in NYC, Samantha is the only local friend who has been patiently looking through color samples and fabric swatches with me. It's so nice to have someone to humor me when I'm obsessing like a crazy person! Although she did make me promise to give it a break this weekend while we celebrate my birthday.

Tonight we're going to meet up with a potential DJ and a potential videographer. After that, I'm looking forward to a weekend of good meals with friends and family, and hopefully sneaking out to a movie with Dylan.

Fantastic album deal today!

I haven't posted any music specials in a long time, but when I saw what the Amazon MP3 download of the day was, I had to spread the word!

Adele's album 19 is on sale for only $2.99! This album is SO good! It's worth so much more than $3. If you haven't heard it yet, you owe it to yourself to spend the three bucks. "Make You Feel My Love" is a beautiful song, and could even be used as a wedding related song!

This link will take you to the album right on Amazon:

And you can just listen to samples of the tracks here:

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Who knew I'd ever be excited about postage?

I don't know if anyone else has read all the stories about mailing out their wedding invitations (or save the dates), but I did. People are crazy. (Including me, because I read all that stuff.) I now feel paranoid about having things addressed properly, and hand-cancelling our invitations to prevent the post office from mangling or marring them. Then came the topic of postage. I've seen a lot of the old fashioned "Love" stamps, so I decided to do a search and see what was available now. I was tickled to find some stamps that I really like! They just came out last week. They're totally the kind of stamps you're supposed to collect rather than use, but what the heck. I'm using them. They're the Celebrating Lunar New Year: Year of the Tiger commemorative stamps!


We're planning to try to send out our save the dates on Valentine's Day, so I thought the dark red background with the narciccus flowers would be nice for that. When I read more about the stamps, it turns out that the Chinese New Year begins on February 14th this year. I'm taking it as a sign! (And my dad is making fun of me for it.)

You can't tell from the picture, but the edges are actually a shimmery metallic gold. I love them extra in person. Maybe they'll help me to get my butt in gear to make a decision on which save the date design we should use. Fingers crossed!

The wedding planning continues!

I know, I know... I haven't posted in forever and a half. We basically took a break from wedding planning over the holidays. Holidays are stressful enough with the planning, preparation, cooking and entertaining. We were due for a break from the wedding obsessing. So now I'm back to obsessing, but I'm feeling refreshed and optimistic.

I just wanted to give an update for some of the progress we've made.

*drum roll please*

We have officially hired Matt Shumate as our wedding photographer. He's terrific, and we're really looking forward to working with him!

We think we have selected a caterer. It's actually one of our favorite locally owned little restaurants here, and I don't think we've ever had anything there that we haven't liked. They're also the first place that gave us the answers we'd been dying to hear. They're flexible and happy to work with us on a menu, they're happy to supply a couple of vegan meals if we need them, and they're happy to do a tasting with us once we narrow down the menu! YES! I don't know why it had to be so ridiculously hard to find somewhere that was happy to do that, but we were thrilled to finally hear it. Plus, as a big added bonus, they also supply the serving staff and the dishes! DOUBLE YES! And YAY! That'll save us hundreds of dollars to not have to rent all of those dishes. We have to meet with them again soon, but at this point, we're feeling pretty good about things.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a little adventure when we went looking for a wedding suit for Dylan. Our TV has been flooded with Men's Wearhouse commercials lately, and we kept seeing the commercial about "When all eyes are on her, she's going to be looking at you..." and how they're going to make you look your best for your wedding. We thought that seemed like a good place to start looking. As it turns out, not so much. We were excited when we arrived, and very disheartened and discouraged by the time we left. The woman who helped us was terrible. She directed us to a section of about a dozen suits on a rack and said that was where we could look. The choices were crap. When we told her we were hoping to find a dark brown suit, she just said they didn't have it. When we asked if there were any options, like maybe finding a suit in a different size and then ordering it in Dylan's size, she actually told us we should just go somewhere else! We couldn't believe it. I told her that there was a nice brown suit on their website, and she shrugged. When we saw a dark brown tuxedo, we asked her about that and she said it was a rental. We had to ask if they had something like that that he could try on, just so he could try on SOMETHING remotely like what we were looking for. We were shocked to find out that they don't have rentals for you to try on. They take your measurements, and you get what they give you. You don't get to try it on first! The woman literally told us we should shop elsewhere several times. Dylan was furious by the time we left. He was ready to write a letter to Mr. "I Guarantee It" in the commercials. It's not like we were being jerks, either. We were polite, and excited about buying his wedding suit. Blah! I don't ever want to go there again.

We decided to make the most of it while we were on the other side of town. I really don't have a good sense of the best places to buy a suit for a man, but I was thinking that our next stops should be somewhere like Macy's and Nordstrom. Lo and behold, across the street from the Men's Wearhouse was the Nordstrom Rack store! We figured it was a longshot, but worth a try. JACKPOT! There was a wonderful girl named Nicole in the men's department at the Nordstrom Rack who went out of her way to help us find the perfect suit for Dylan. We found a gorgeous chocolate brown Ben Sherman suit that we both instantly loved. Unfortunately, they only had it one size too small for Dylan! Lovely Nicole made it her personal mission to help us find the suit in his size. I don't know how many other Nordstrom Rack stores she ended up calling, but today she called and announced that she had found the suit! HOORAY! She gave me the number to the San Jose store, and when I reached their men's department I got as far as, "Hi, I'm calling because someone from the Spokane Nord--" and he said, "Yeah! Is this Alyson?" Now that's service when a complete stranger from several states away knows your name. So now we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Dylan's gorgeous new Ben Sherman wedding suit! And if for some reason the suit isn't right or doesn't fit, we can return it locally, so it's pretty risk-free. We're so excited!

This is a picture from the Nordstrom website of what I'm fairly certain is the same Ben Sherman suit that we bought him (except this one is navy, obviously):


This is a picture I took of the suit we found, so hopefully the suit that's being shipped to us will look like this! My flash made the suit look a little brighter than it really is, it's a nice dark brown.


Dylan's going to look so good!

Oooh, and I also found a pair of wedding shoes at the Nordstrom Rack. They're very simple, but they're a pretty iridescent pearl and they're so soft they feel like slippers. And I got them on clearance for less than $20! I've heard too many horror stories about brides wearing hot shoes that killed their feet, so these will at least be my Plan B shoes, even if I find something fancier for pictures.