Trick or Treating with Etsy Greetings

Etsy Greetings invites you to go trick or treating. I am participating in this week's fun! Here are the rules:

This is a fun, easy trick or treating experience, heavy on the “treat.” Everyone who finishes Trick or Treating through the shops will receive a coupon good for free shipping*. At the end of each week, the coupon holders will automatically be entered in a drawing for a pack of cards that has been donated by all our talented Etsy Greetings Team members!

Below is a list of this week’s participating sellers and just below that is a list of Halloween words that can be found in the listed shops. These words will be found in the TITLE of the listing.
What you need to do is visit each shop, find a listing with ONE of the words and click on the item (each shop name can only be used for one Halloween word). Notate the listing number. (Found on the right side of the page, under the heading “additional item info”.)

Once you have trick or treated at each shop, please contact SarahKatesKreations (http://www.SarahKatesKreations.etsy.com) with your list. She will email you your coupon and enter you in the drawing for a pack of cards!

Here is the list of participating shops...

AScrappyDesign
BeverlyDyer
CapeCard
CardGoddess
CardsByJenna
HaleysHandmades
NYPapercrafter
RavynFaire
RoseBushDesigns
Southernscraps
StelieDesigns

Here is a list of our Halloween Words...

bats
black
boo
candy corn
cat
fall
frightful
halloween
moon
spooky
witch


Happy Haunt.... I mean Hunting!

And please feel free to visit our blog at http://www.etsygreetings.blogspot.com and learn more about all of the talented and wonderful Etsy Greetings Team members. We're giving Hallmark a run for their money!

A Finished Craft Room!

I finally got my big piece of furniture in the craft room. It is the gentleman's chest pictured below. As mentioned in a previous post, my mom gave it to me to house my supplies. It has many drawers and the cabinets are deep. It is just over 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide. It is about 1 and 1/2 feet deep.

Now, here is the kicker--2 men carried it up my stairs to the second floor. See, my craft room is the bonus room above the garage. We hired our handyman to help us do this. He, SuperJim, and my husband lugged this thing up the stairs at 9 at night while my mom and I counted the gray hairs rapidly popping out in our hair. My son, by the way, thought it was cool-when he could tear himself away from the Backyardigans. My husband had a strap and would holler "Ho!" (no kidding, he really did) and SuperJim had his back under it and that is how they got this sucker up. Thankfully, no one got hurt, it didn't get scratched, fall down the stairs and take out the front door--seriously, I thought it would happen.

Afterward, my husband needed a LARGE drink and a handful of advil and SuperJim was laughing. I guess that is what all superheroes do.

I spent the next couple of days organizing, getting bins for the little things--because there are a lot of little items involved in paper crafting and just finding a home for everything. I am supremely happy with my new space. I was up here till almost midnight Saturday just enjoying the space and tidying up. My husband had to come up and remind me I had an early morning and should think about sleep.

I still have a few things left to do. I need to hang the organizer sitting on the craft table. I still need to paint since the current color which I think is named dirty yuck is not working for me. The room is still spillover guest space so I have to be mindful of that but I am still in love with my new space!

Witchy Woman

The weather stinks today. It is wet and humid. I can't take pictures and I wanted to try something with my inks but am not sure they will dry right with the rain, so I'm playing.

I have unfortunate hair. Witchy hair, I like to call it. I have to dry it then curl it with a good curling iron or flat iron it. I actually did put product in my hair this morning. It helped a bit, really it did. My hair gets all poofy and frizzy and fuzzy and flies all over the place. On days like this I usually put it up in a clip but with the change in the pressure it also brought a headache so I am letting it hang--quite literally.

I ran with my son to the store real quick and by the time I got back, my hair had gotten poofier and this was the result. Some people pay good money to perm their hair to do this. I don't get it, I just don't.

For all my friends who have never seen my hair except curled or up--here it is. Make sure the kids don't see. I know they think I'm a witch anyway.

I do have some good news, though. SuperJim is bringing my gentleman's chest tomorrow night! Mom and I spent the afternoon yesterday putting most of the stuff I have in bins to put in the chest so we are ready for it. I'll take pics in a few days and post.

I've Been Tagged!

It's been going around the blogging world like a virus. The tag. You name 6 things about yourself, "tag" 5 people then they do the same. It's fun. You get to do something silly and involve others in it. I always prefer to have cohorts when I do silly things.

I was tagged by OmShanti. She has a great shop with luscious balms, soaps and salves. She also happens to be having a sale now!

My facts:

1) I lived for 3 years out of my native country in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2) I've probably lived in over 20 homes.
3)I will be celebrating my 6th wedding anniversary in 2 weeks.
4) Besides making cards, I like to knit.
5) I own probably over 2000 books.
6)I really, really don't want to move away from where I am now.

Now, I am tagging some fellow etsians. Take a look at their fabulous shops and their blogs. They are very interesting people and very nice to boot!

RoseWorks Jewlery and her blog. I featured her in my last entry.
ChristopherandTia and her blog. You probably know her from her monday suck day blog give away. She's super cute and a lot of fun.
CurlyfrySC'sCollage and blog. She is on my Team South Carolina and is also very nice!
KalaPholStudio has one of the more interesting blogs I read.
Last, but certainly not least is Posh Pretties. She has the very cool blog that inspired my new background. You can find out more about that about 3 posts ago.

Blog Feature

I was featured in Rose Work's blog recently. Rose work has a great esty site and is a member of Big Damn Crafters as am I. We all come together to relish in our common geekness in the show Firefly and all things geeky and Joss Whedon. You can check out more about us at our blog, by clicking on the link or going to my blog roll below.

On her blog, she likes to feature fellow Big Damn Crafters and their works and this week's feature was the color blue. Why, you may ask? Because she felt like it.

Now, my favorite color is brown. Here are a couple of my favorite pieces from her shop.




I just love the necklace. It is simple, yet shows a range of beautiful autumn colors. The earrings are flirty and would swing along in my hair when I would wear them.

Go on over to her shop and take a look around. She does a lot of colors and has some whimsical pieces in there as well.

New Look for Blog

I really, really need to be organizing the craft room. I have gotten a few things done. The stamps are pretty well organized, the books are, too. It's the little things that are making me nuts. The non set stamps, the individual markers, the bits of this and that here and there. Since I won't have my huge gentelman's chest to start shoving things into yet, I'm feeling a little lost.

So, I've been haning out in the forums and came across art2theextreme's forum post. You can visit her blog at the previous link. She is talking about another cool blog, by Posh Pretties. Posh Pretties does have a cool blog and I had visited it since she posted about my craft room mess and gave me words of encouragement. I thought she was a whiz at html and thought nothing more of it. Well, art2theextreem wasn't satisfied with that and did some investigating and looked in the upper left hand corner of the blog where there was a link for The Cutest Blog on the Block. Yeah, she is way more observant than I am. Anyway, there are tons of very cool and FREE blog backgrounds for you to use.

Check them out and give your blog the new look it deserves!

So, what do you all think of the new look?

My Craft Room Vomited

About a week and a half ago I decided I HAD to do something about my craft area. It was out of control. I had built in shelves off to one end that were covered in books that could be better utilized for supplies, things listed, etc. I finally talked my husband into putting a bookcase in his office to house said books.

We asked our handyman how much it would cost to build us a bookcase and were floored by the price. Wood has gotten very expensive lately.

In the interim, I had started boxing up said books and reorganizing. I was well on my way to
getting ready to hit the holiday season with
zeal and lots of product.














Then, my mom has a great idea. She has a ginormous gentleman's chest that she plain doesn't have room for and wants me to put it in my overcrowded craft room. It is a beautiful piece. A bit impractical, but beautiful nonetheless. Plus, she is crafting alongside me now and buying supplies, so how can I say no?

My computer table won't fit alongside the far wall so we call our handyman to adjust some shelves to create a makeshift table for me and my lovable campaign desk will have to go into storage.















But, wait!

My handyman looks at my built in ugliness and says they are good wood, solid and there is enough to make the bookcase my husband wants and I get to clear them out of my craft room!! I'm beginning to think he has super powers. You know, we call him Super Jim around her and talk about him with our hand on our hips in our best superhero stance.

SuperJim arrived yesterday, took down the ugliness that was the built in shelves, helped me move my lovable campaign desk and is bringing my mom's gentleman's chest next week. In the interim I have this to deal with. I'm organizing and sorting as best I can. I actually sat in the floor for a couple hours yesterday listening to my friend's radio broadcast (see my blog roll) trying to figure out where to start. I'm need to at least uncover a part of my craft table so I can get some things done. I can't even see not making anything for almost 2 weeks, can you?

The pictures are a bit of what I have still to clean up.