Polka Dot Bride is running a really cool contest with Smock: tell how you’re making your life more green, and you can win some Smock stationery. We love all the ideas people are posting about, but especially using herbs as centerpieces for a wedding or party — cool! Check it out here, and you have one day left to enter too….thanks to Polka Dot Bride for hosting the contest too. What fun!

We have a feeling gold is going to be the big color in the world of 2009 letterpress wedding invitations. Not a gaudy old-fashioned over the top gold of course, but an elegant, pretty, sophisticated, modern gold. We love our Lashar design letterpressed in gold + black (with the invitations, reply cards, and place cards backed in a cool flood of raspberry). Both the invitation envelopes and the reply card envelopes are lined with our Marev pattern in gold. Wow.

POCOYO. For my kids anyway. And, truth be told, for my husband too. Its a post bath ritual at our house to jump in bed with the laptop and watch an episode. In fact, our youngest, has officially named the computer “Pocoyo” as if its the cute little guy himself. Then she hums the tune & claps her hands until we turn it on. Which explains why the computer is often under cover, quite literally. A favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s-BMBQXahg&feature=related

Nevis is one of our hot letterpress invitation designs right now (perfect for fall or winter weddings!)–we loved seeing it as a birthday party invitation too, and the striped patterning on the back is pitch-on perfect. It’s such a classic, sophisticated design with an edge of cool. Sent to us by William Ernest Brown in Beverly Hills, California.

We don’t see a whole lot of sun in the fall and winter here in Syracuse — usually the sky is covered with various shades of gray (but pretty grays!). Though sometimes this time of year, at the end of the day, we’re treated to really fabulous shows of color and light.

We love this one color classic true rich bright red for a letterpress holiday card. This design is based on our Vettore letterpress wedding invitation, usually two color, but perfect in one color RED. Sent to us by RSVP Today. If you’re looking for preprinted letterpress holiday cards, check out our merry social section.

INDIAN SUMMERS. For one, they remind me of our true summers — which are, where we live in Wisconsin, filled with water and sand and popsicles. Oh, and a good amount of sailing. By the time the last regatta roles around we are ready for the quieter days of fall and the quietest days of winter. But we love those days of sunshine and boat rides while they last and miss them when they’re gone.

Ah, we love this — calligraphy letterpress wedding invitations printed in a really rich, deep eggplant ink. This is a customization of our Haddington wedding invitation design, featuring our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font (we had this font made just for us — it’s based on our favorite calligrapher’s penmanship). The envelope liner uses the Rousseau pattern in eggplant. Sent to us by Therese St. Clair in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Receive free gift wrapping (with our 100% post-consumer recycled gift wrap) + a free cute matching gift card with your message handwritten inside. All you need to do is purchase $25 from smockpaper.com and then plant a tree during checkout ($1 donation to American Forests). Smock, by the way, always matches tree donations, so if you plant a tree, we’ll plant a tree too. This promotion begins now and goes until Dec. 25. Here are some autumn photos to get you in the mood, taken at our local neighborhood park one frosty morning when the light was lovely and bright and the trees were all aflame.

Over here at Smock, we believe that environmental letterpress and eco green printing is so much more than simply using recycled paper & soy inks. If a print shop is committed to the environment, its green practices should really affect everything that company does. So we were thrilled when our parent company, Boxcar Press, subsidized a 20-week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm subscription for employees this year. It was a perfect fit: we got to love local organic farms; love the environment; and care for our letterpress team here too via really, really good vegetables. Tuesday was the last day that these amazing bins of produce got delivered to us from Grindstone Farm in Pulaski, NY and Wyllie Fox Farm in Cato, NY. We all know the growing season in CNY is pretty much over (we had our first snow fall this week too!), but we’re sure going to miss all the veggies. Pictured below is Carrie, our office manager, who helped organize everything. Thanks, Carrie + Grindstone + Wyllie Fox! We can’t wait until summer next year.