Friday, October 31, 2008

Costume Contest

I need some voting today. I'm going to enter Jack's Elvis costume (2 years ago; my mom made it) in a photo costume contest. Which of these photos do you like?

I was going to find an Elvis wig, but I figured there was no need to go overboard. The way the contest works is that if you make it through the first round, then it's up to the public's vote.

It really bugs me that some of the photos have random things in the background. D'oh! I should have picked up better before I took the pictures. Maybe Tina can photoshop it for me.



Wednesday, October 29, 2008

How-To Guru

Our how-to site is squeaking along slowly. We're not getting a TON of visitors, and I'm still trying to figure out how to promote it. We recently started offering weekly giveaways with our how-tos as incentive for people to visit our site. That seems to be helping, but I don't yet know how to get the big traffic. I think I'd need a major blogger or media site of some sort to do a story on us, and I don't know how to make that happen.

By the way, enter to win a tie dye sweatshirt this week, just by making a comment.

I figure this is a good learning process no matter what. I started out by doing a super simple blog, and now I can add html to make it three columns, change the background, etc., etc.

By the way, if you have any shopping on Amazon to do, please do it through our blog. We get a portion of sales if you enter through our site. Yes, yes, this is cool. But we haven't made any money yet.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Halloween Fun

I'd like to be posting a picture of Jack and Anna in their costumes right about now, but sadly, my camera is gone. Let me back up, though.

First things first...on Friday, I took off a 1/2 day to help out in Jack's classroom. They were having their party that day, and I helped clean out pumpkin goop and such. It was a lot of fun and not crazy at all. The kids were surprisingly well behaved. I NEVER would have paraded 21 kids around the school in and out of all the classrooms, but this teacher did and those kids stayed in line the whole time. Amazing!

Then today was our city's trick-or-treat day. The kids were SUPER excited to get going. And even though it was cold and windy, they barely noticed (until the light freezing rain started...then they noticed). I got some fabulous pictures, but my camera has mysteriously disappeared. Actually, it's not so mysterious. It was in the holder on the stroller, but we think it fell out when we folded down the stroller and loaded it in the van. Steve went right back to try and find it, but it wasn't there. I figure there's a 50/50 chance of whether some punk kid picked it up verses a family. And honestly, if you find a camera, how the heck are you supposed to find out who it belongs to?

Lesson learned: put your phone number on your camera. This is a basic lesson for taking it on vacation and such, but sadly, I never did it. Grrr.

Luckily, I had uploaded my pictures recently, so here's a lovely photo of the kids and Steve with our carved pumpkins.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Happy Birthday to Ash!

Today is my good friend, Ashley's, birthday. Ash is pretty awesome and a super talented news producer and cake maker extraordinaire. She was always the "best dressed" girl of our group in high school. (That "best dressed" award for senior year totally should have gone to you Ash. I think the ballots were fixed.)

It's weird to think about how long I've known her. One of my only memories of kindergarten is being scared on the first day. Then my mom told me that Ashley would be in my class, and that immediately made me happy. (I also have memories of mean Mrs. Cooper, but I won't go into those.)

I was almost always on the same t-ball or softball team with Ash. (Go Dolls!) We didn't hang out much in junior high, but then good old speech class brought us back together. I have many, many, many great memories with Ashley in them. The best thing about Ash is that she appears to be more conservative on the outside, but she's got some great funk hidden underneath. (Though she probably wouldn't choose the word "funk" for herself. Hehe.)

I guess my favorite moment with Ash would have to be performing our dramatic duet, Wings, in high school. (Dramatic duet was just a category for a theatre competition where you had two people perform a 5 to 10 minute routine.) Ash and I didn't like any of the usual dramatic duets out there, so we wrote our own and got it published under a pseudonym by some semi-shady Web site online. I sure wish I could find it now. We did pretty good that year with Wings.

Above all, I feel very lucky that Ash and I are still in touch, even though we went to different colleges and now live in different states. Thanks for keeping in touch, Ash.

And to show how super talented Ash is, here's a picture of one of her cool cakes she makes.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Headed to School

Jack's class is having their Halloween party tomorrow at school, and I volunteered to help. I'm taking off 1/2 a day of work to help parade the kids around the school in their costumes and carve pumpkins.

I think I'm more excited than Jack is. It's my first "help at school" day. We're supposed to bring the "healthy" treat for the party, so we put grapes it cute little ghosts bags.

Then Sunday is trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.

I'll try to remember to report on my morning with a bunch of 4-year-olds. Around 10 a.m., I might be thinking, "What have I got myself into?"

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Darn that Gymboree

I wanted "puffer" vests for the kids to take their Christmas picture in. I found THE perfect ones on Gymboree, but to buy them, it would have been over $70! I know, insane. But then I was at the mall today and they were on sale. Plus, I just happened to have a 20% off Gymboree coupon in purse that I had pulled out of a magazine the day before. It was like destiny.

I blame Amber for getting me hooked on Gymboree. It's all her fault.

Take a look at Anna's vest in this link.
(Jack's is cute, too, but doesn't have the adorable fur.)

By the way, Steve tells me that you're supposed to wear these vests OVER your coat in the really cold weather. I think he's crazy. He tells me I don't know what I'm talking about and didn't grow up in cold weather. But seriously? These vests are for looks, right? Who puts them on over a coat?!?

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Gift Idea

Anna's birthday is a month away, but I'm a planner you know. I took the day off to spend with her, and I'm planning to take her to one of those dress up places that you see in the mall and such. We bought her this really cool horse that you can actually climb on from someone on craigslist, but I've been trying to think of one more gift kind of thing that she can open.

I was thinking of having someone on Etsy do a drawing of her (kind of like a caricature). She loves princesses and loves horses, so I was thinking it would be cute to have a picture of her riding a horse in some princess gear.

What does anyone think of this? I could see her totally coveting this picture because it's her. But maybe not. Thoughts?

My blog is a little light right now because of the How-To stuff. It's fun for now, but we'll see if I can keep it up.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Busy, busy, busy

Tina and I had so much fun working together on Mrs. Studevant's auction (we raised about $1,500) that we wanted to find another way to work together. So even though we are both way too busy with general life, we thought of a way.

We started the Web site, www.how-tostudio.com. (Sorry Amber, this tagline got a ton of votes.) We're still figuring it out and how to promote it, but we want it to be a fun, blog-style site that tells how people on Etsy make their cool items. This all started because we've been talking about making our own Christmas gifts ideas, and we started getting some good ideas on Etsy. We thought others would like to see step-by-step projects, too, so that's how How-To Studio started.

Who knows how long the site will last, but isn't it cool for now?!?

Tina is the business girl of the operation...she has an Etsy store started for us where we are actually "selling" our writing and photo services. Such a savvy gal. Then I'm mostly handling the how-to stuff. We have about 4 how-to projects right now...all have been done by Etsy people just helping us out. I hope we actually get others who want to be featured. Otherwise, the site will definitely fizzle. Stay tuned!

Oh, and go make a comment on there, if you don't mind. Then it'll look like we're actually getting activity.