Neurotic Nesting: Paper Trail

The following is my account of what happens when you go on maternity leave after you have already finished the nusery. It is my personal example of "Neurotic Nesting".

The birth anouncement- so important and so many choices. Of course, I will want to let people know right away, so a paper anouncement by itself won't be enough. Many of our friends have sent out emails to let everyone know the general stats. Email seems to be a logical choice for letting people know ASAP, but of course, that leaves me wanting to design both the digital email anouncement and the more formal paper anouncement. I was talking to Tim about how I needed to get on this before the baby gets here, he mentioned that he really wanted the anouncement to be something clever. Hmmm. Digital, paper, creative, and clever. He was thinking something like my Altoid business cards. I thought, "Ok, well if we name the baby Timothy James Garrett, II, then I guess I could try to do something with Junior Mints or something". But I don't want my baby anouncement to be commercialized like that- and I dont want anyone calling him Junior- and what if its a girl, and what if we don't end up using Tim's name? There are just too many unknowns in that situation. and what if I want a photo anouncement? Should I choose color or black and white or sepia or spot color?

How can I make it sophisticated and clever? Well, I'm not sure I can, so I've decided I'll be doing two anouncements, or wait, maybe three. One digital that we send out the day of, one sophisticated that we send to everyone, and one that is a little more fun and clever that we will include with the anouncement to family, close friends, and anyone else that's into that kind of thing. I know, its totally overboard- but I just can't decide on just one. And the scariest part is that I have actually picked out two of each of them because I dont know if we are having a boy or a girl. I'm embarrased to admit that I have six anouncements picked out- its crazy, but I love picking out this paper stuff and I just can't narrow it down. I have become obsessed with the details of it- I want to use the custom stamps from USPS with the baby's picture (but not on every anouncement, the shape isn't right for each of them), the Eames stamps on others (if the USPS will ever get them in stock- I waited for a half hour at the 34th st post office for them the other day and they werent there yet- nor had anone there ever heard of them). I may need to order return address stickers for some, others will be printed on the envelope. And so many addresses I need to get together- the grand email list and our paper address list, and Mom and Dad Scott's address list and Mom and Dad Garrett's address list. I'm completely freaking out about it! Last week my nightmare was that I went into labor and I hadn't gotten my hair done yet. Well since I got my hair done mid-last week, all I can think now is that this baby is going to get here and by gosh I'm not going to have all the anouncements figured out. And as you can tell, this anouncement thing has turned into a highly complex operation that I will need to master before I'm up all night with a newborn. I have called in reinforcements- my sister Kathy. We have discussed this anouncement thing over and over-- emailing different ideas back and forth and discussing the appropriateness of each one. I'm not going to tell you which ones we have picked out, but I will post the following websites that I thought were goodresources andhad at least one announcements that we considered.

https://www.fabulousstationery.com/usstationery.com/

http://www.morethanpaper.com/

http://www.imag-inations.com/

http://www.bayberryannouncements.com/

http://www.invitingsmiles.com/ (They did Amanda P.'s super cute anouncement)

http://www.metrobabycards.com/

http://www.sassybabydesigns.com/

http://storkgrams.com/

http://www.tinyprints.com/

http://www.magneticmessenger.com/ (This one has some groovy magnetic anouncements, but this sparked a whole new array of descisions to wade through. Magnetic would be cool, but it could end up looking tacky. Whats the print and color quality like? If people have a stainless refridge, where the heck are they going to stick it? Although we will have the most beaustiful baby ever born, it has occured to me that not everyone is going to put my baby's mug on their refridgerator, so is this a little presumptuous? The sizes are smaller than standards size- argh.)

jenn