Earlier this year 13 Creative leased it's very first 'Company Car'! How exciting, no?

When my license plates arrived in the mail a few weeks after I got the car, I was pretty bummed out... not a 13 in sight! Usually, as luck would have it, there is some version of the number 13 in the addresses of the places I live or work, or my license plates, drivers license number, health-insurance card, you name it! I might be a total nerd, but I love finding my lucky number anywhere I can.

It could be the number 13, or it could be a 4 & 9 (next to each other) or some other combination of numbers that add up to 13. I don't discriminate... if it adds up to 13, it's good by me!

Sensing the disappointment about my lackluster license plate, a friend suggested that I get a personalized license plate for my new ride. "Maybe it could even say 13 Creative" she said! I thought it was a fantastic idea and immediately wanted to share this news with Brad (husband, 13 Creative cheerleader, fanclub manager and chief cook and bottle washer!)

When I told Brad about this genius plan, he looked troubled. He told me that there was no way I was going to be able to register a license plate that said 13 Creative. I asked why, and that's when he told me...

(wait for it, wait for it)

... that he'd already applied for that license plate for me, the week I got the new car! Surprise!!

Several weeks passed and no plates showed up, but one day a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles arrived. The letter informed us that the DMV needed more information in order to approve our request for these plates. Apparently, the license plate 13CRE8V seemed questionable. Questionable? Huh?

So, Brad responded to the letter and attached one of my business cards, with a further explanation of my business, reiterating that this license plate spelled my company name, and that it didn't mean anything more than that. And then we waited. Waited and waited... still no plates.

Not long ago, I hired a photographer to shoot some of my recently completed wedding invitations and  announcements.

When I'm not designing wedding invitations and announcements, you can usually find me hard at work designing food packaging and other more commercial design projects. When art directing photoshoots for food packages, the shoots are really challenging because food doesn't usually stand up well under the heat of the lights so you have to work very closely with the food stylists to achieve a result where the food you're shooting actually looks delicious and appealing! And, to be honest, a lot of food products just don't photograph well at all, so you have to use alternative food items, or non-food items that look like actual food... which makes things even trickier. I'll tell you this - never once has a piece of grilled chicken actually been grilled in order to get those perfect grill marks you see in photos. They don't come from anything even resembling a grill, I promise you that!

But I digress; and luckily enough for me, wedding invitations and paper products do stand up to the heat of the lights!

While I was overseeing this photoshoot of my work on this particular day, and while the photographer was setting up a few of the shots, I took some quick pictures with my iPhone to document our work process. It wasn't until after I got the final professional pictures back that I marveled at how fun it would be to do a side-by-side comparison of what some of the pictures looked like 'behind the scenes' versus what the camera actually sees and what turns into finished photography.

The pictures are beautiful, and I am so happy - but it's really funny to think about what's "really real", versus what's sort of "fake real". One of my favorite quotes (that I think I made up myself!) is "Perception is reality" and I think it sums this up perfectly.

So, without further ado, here are the ol' before & afters... or Reals & Fake Reals!

In 1994 I graduated highschool, and moved to Chicago to attend The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.  While at school there, studying bookbinding and papermaking (and sort of attempting to be in the graphic design program) I made a good friend named Sara.

Sara and I were great pals... we had a lot in common and were in love with the same things; namely art and paper products.  And boy, did we know how to make a good mess! Papermaking is not exactly a neat and tidy process.  Nor a dry one!  So we would spend days in wet, messy clothes, making beautiful paper and binding it into precious books.

One day Sara and I were talking about how we wanted to live when we "grew up."  We both decided that when we graduated school and had a real "life", with a real apartment, that we each wanted to have a "white room" in our homes.  A room that was so clean, and organized, and white!  The white room symbolized so much to us - it symbolized a sort of success.  The success of having our own place, of having a place that was clean, that was minimalist, but that was uber design savvy.  It meant being a stylish grownup.  It was the opposite of how we lived as students.

We talked about our white rooms ad nauseum!  Then Sara moved to Japan (to teach english and further study Japanese papermaking techniques) and I moved to Pasadena to continue restart my graphic design education at Art Center.

Over the next several years, Sara and I had a pretty awesome penpal-ship!  We would write fantastic letters and send awesome packages to each other around the globe, and every now and again, Sara would send me magazine clippings of some furniture or home decor that she saw, that we had to put into our white room!  Our fantasy white room kept growing and evolving, never too far from our minds.

I'm a very lucky girl... because after living in nearly every corner of Europe & many different cities in America, my very dear, longtime pal Sara recently moved to California, and lives no more than approximately 2 miles away from me.  At our advanced age of 35 (!), and now each with 2 kids, we have the knowledge and understanding that our dream of having a white room is likely never going to come true.  But that doesn't stop Sara from clipping out pictures of our fantasy white furniture when she comes across great ideas in magazines.  And it doesn't stop us from talking about our fantasy white room... and what a funny fantasy that is nowadays!  We both tend to end our white room discussions with "One day Jenn..." or "One day Sara..." and attempt to keep the dream alive, holding out hope for some time after the kids grow up, and are out of the house... when the words "please don't color on the walls" aren't part of our everyday vocabulary!

Anyway, that's a long preamble to help you get into my head, so that you can imagine how I felt when I saw an email in my inbox this morning, from the Martha Stewart Wedding magazine people, talking about white centerpieces, and other white components for a "White Wedding!"

Wow!  This is like the ultimate realization of Sara's & my white room fantasy.  And, you could even achieve this while having kids at home!  This concept doesn't even require a cleaning lady every day to keep things white, and or a furniture budget of $100k!!  This would be a fantastic way to bring to life our white room by way of a party (wedding or otherwise!)

So, here are some of the great pictures, courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings Idea of the Day, of ways to make your party white!  I think this could get a little overdone if all the guests wore white, but imagine how festive, chic and gorgeous this would be if you requested guests to wear bright colors!

Gotta go now - have to call Sara and tell her that we have a new, slightly modified white fantasy to start clipping pictures for!