Monthly Archives: April 2012

Closed For Vacation

It was time.

I swear, I am thinking of all of you.

Right now.

On this beach.

Anyone want to guess where this beach is?

If you’ve been to this place, you’ve seen this tree.

At least that’s what I’m told.

No, I don’t have access to my blog.

Yes, I’m totally unplugged.

But I am writing.

Yes, I am using my sunscreen.

And, yes, someone with a very big gun and an enormous pit bull is watching my house.

Duh.

What’s the best vacation you ever took? Where’d you go and what made it so great?

The Blessing of Paper: Bar Mitzvah Tales, Part 1

The Ten Commandments, In SVG

Image via Wikipedia

As some of you know, I have been planning my son’s bar mitzvah.

For the last 18 million months.

I will eventually write more about the horrors and the joys of this journey.

But let’s start here with the invitations.

I know a lot of people like very traditional designs when it comes to invitations for religious events.

Me? Not so much.

I looked around and found very few invitations that got me excited.

Meanwhile, everyone kept telling me:

The invitation sets the tone for the event.

Finally I decided to get Tech Support involved.

He was all shoulder shrugs.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Just pick something cool.”

Finally, I found the invitation that spoke to both of us.

It isn’t traditional. It is actually kind of funky.

And I don’t mean that it is contemporary.

It is just right, and I got them from Rishona Beck Myers at RM Creative Events.

And I would love to show a picture to you, but I haven’t sent them out yet.

So I can’t.

But I can tell you that only after the invitations and all the coordinating inserts arrived did I realize I kind of forgot about thank-you notes.

This should give you some insight into my abilities as an event planner.

I was just about to start searching again when eInvite bar mitzvah invitations came to my rescue.

They have a fabulous thank-you card that coordinates with my son’s invitation perfectly.

Click here to see more information about this thank-you note.

Initially, I was nervous about ordering from an online vendor, but they are printed on the same high-quality Checkerboard paper on which his invitations are printed.

And no, Tech Support’s real name isn’t Kayla.

And I didn’t use this font.

I used a more masculine font that matches his invitation – so everything goes together, which is lovely.

So lovely that I can actually hear my son telling his friends that he can’t swim in their pool or have a water fight or shoot off rockets in the backyard because he is just so excited to touch these papers. I can see him holding a pen and happily writing out all his thank-you notes without a single complaint.

Whaaat?

A mother can dream, right?

If you are looking to order bar or bat mitzvah invitations or thank-you notes online, be sure to check out eInvite.com.

Have you ever ordered something major from an online vendor? How’d that work out for you?

I received 50 Conventional Tie Die Celebration Bar Mitzvah Thank-You Notes from eInvite.com in exchange for writing this post. But all the opinions are mine. And these thank-you notes rock.

Rivki Silver is no Huffaloftus!

Here’s Rivki!

I had never heard of her before December 2011.

But I had been looking for a bunch of bloggers to write about Hanukkah and the marvelous Nina Badzin suggested I contact Rivki.

What a find!

Rivki writes a blog called Life In The Married Lane.

An observant Jew, she writes some fabulous (and often funny) posts of Jewish interest where she demystifies a lot about the seemingly mysterious world of Orthodox Jewry in America. She has a great piece about why she covers her head here and here.

Her mission is to inspire others to find meaning in the mundane.  She shares household tips, parenting advice {and foibles}, relationship stuff, menu planning and more. She also loves garden gnomes and…um, she likes to lie on a carpet and smell the fibers. Right. Also she has this weird thing she can do with her tongue.

Okay bazinga.

Why am I going on and on about Rivki Silver?

And is all that true?

Well, the part about her being a very good writer is. I don’t know about the gnomes. Or the carpet. And I have no idea what she can or cannot do with he tongue. (You would have to talk to her husband. Or maybe her dentist.)

I’m writing about Rivki because she won the “What the deuce is a Huffaloftus?” poll by a landslide! And telling all my readers about her greatness was the prize.

So check out her blog. And her Facebook page. And you can stalk her on Twitter @RivkiSilver.

Guaranteed her posts will teach you something new.

Now it’s your turn to spread a little mischievous fun.

Write 25 words about a favorite blogger. (Be sure to tell us the name and URL of the blog to which that person is attached.) Oh, and don’t be afraid to fiction it up a little. After all, it is April Fools’ Day. And be sure to direct that person to the words you leave here. That person might have a thing or two to say about you!

Tweet this twit @rasjacobson