My Halloween Drama

Halloween is a huge event at my house to the point where costumes are typically purchased a month in advance. However, for reasons I'm still not quite sure of, I didn't start shopping for costumes until last week - insert "eek" here.

My oldest son decided that he wanted to be a combat soldier - easy. And, after much thought, my youngest son decided that he wanted to be the Blue Power Ranger - even easier, or so I thought. The last time I heard about Power Rangers was the late 90's, so who knew that every store in greater Atlanta would be sold out of Power Ranger costumes this year! I looked and looked and finally located one at Party City. I couldn't believe my luck, until the guy handed me the package and then I knew exactly why the costume had not been purchased...


No mask? Really? I frantically called my husband for advice and he assured me that I had enough crafting mojo to make a mask. So, with new found confidence, I purchased the mask-less costume. Here's my best attempt at making my kid a Power Ranger...


Can you tell what the mask really is? It's Iron Man!


I first spray painted the entire mask blue...


Then I cut the shape on the mask out of foam paper and hot glued it on - much easier than I thought it would be!



My son is completely happy with his costume - crisis averted! Hope you all have a Happy Halloween!!

DIY Biz Card

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend my very first blogger conference and it was a-mazing! I'm gonna devote a whole separate post about that event later this week because it deserves a serious shout out.

One of the things I learned prior to going to the conference was that I needed to be armed with a ton of business cards to share with all of the fabulous bloggers that I'd meet. Unfortunately the cards I owned only listed my website that is in desperate need of a makeover. So, the day before the conference, I decided to make my own business cards that listed my blog and Etsy store info. I knew this was a little risky given the fact that I'd never done it before, but I'm still in a "nothing ventured nothing gained" kind of mindset. So here's what I made...


I'd love to take full credit for this design, but it was actually inspired by this gorgeous card that I saw on Flickr.


I had to get feedback from my toughest critic (my 5 year old son), who quickly bashed the entire design. Here's how his critique went:
"Um Mom, why is the bunny on the front? Shouldn't it be the hat instead? If you keep it like that people will think your company is called 'Hare & Hatter'. I think you're confused."


Ouch! I tried to sell the design to my kid another way by pointing out how artistic it is to see the hat within the outline of the hare once you open the card. His response: "Yep, you're confused".


I'm not embarrassed to tell you that I actually spent an hour redesigning the card based on the input of a 5 year old. Seriously. However, at a certain point I realized that I didn't have that kind of time and went back to the original (some would say 'confusing') design.



I spent the rest of the night cutting out the silhouette of the hare by hand, but it was so worth it!

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained...

Two months after creating an Etsy shop, I finally had a chance to actually put items in said shop...and there was much rejoicing! So I invite you to pop over to my new digs and check out the merchandise here - more items on the way soon!

My plan is to start off selling party decorations - centerpieces, banners and wall signs. But I have a ton of ideas for coordinating items that I hope to offer as well. The first items listed in the store are all Halloween-themed, but here is a sneak peek of another product line that I'm working on...cowgirls rock!