HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Happy Halloween my pretties! We're going to the pumpkin patch to pick our carving pumpkins, then we're going to come home and carve the pumpkins, then cook the seeds, then eat LaRosa's pizza (it's a tradition!) then watch the Nightmare Before Christmas then get the girls dressed to go trick-or-treating! What are you going to do on this, the greatest holiday ever?!

The pictures of Halloween past!

Pictures from Halloween past! I loooved fellow blogger pal Wrestling Kittie's post about growing up with a handy mother who made costumes. I, too, had a handy mother who made a lot of our costumes growing up! I have some old pics of my brothers and I and also photos of more recent Halloweens to share!! Click to make the pics bigger!

My little brother as a pumpkin, a sad pumpkin. It looks like my older brother and I really could give a crap that he's crying, huh? Haha!

Aww, little bro as a cute clown! My mom made this costume and I think we all wore it at one point.

My mom made the elephant costume, that's me in there trucking it during a Halloween parade at school. Those loafers I'm wearing are awesome, I know! The costumes back then seemed so much simpler didn't they? Heck, you could get away with just wearing a paper mask, or even less! Check out that little dude behind me - he's got just stripes of paint on his face!

And I was realizing as I was looking through the photos that we recycled our handmade costumes over and over and I know they were shared with cousins too!

My mom in the clown costume she made. Her and my dad were going to a costume party and obviously it was bedtime for us kiddies. I've got a Smurf nightgown on!

See what I mean about recycling? Little bro is wearing the elephant costume, I'm wearing my mom's clown costume. That's my dad with us. This photo cracks me up, I should submit it to Awkward Family Photos, huh? Hmm. Two clowns, an enormous clown face made o' fruit, and an ... elephant. To be fair, this wasn't for Halloween but for some produce exhibition my dad was involved with for work. And we were just excited to dress up, so we gladly went along!

I'm a devil! That costume was handmade.

Little bro as a dog! And another year for the creepy mask on my older bro. He liked that mask. He even has on the same shirt and jeans too! LOOK AT MY SHOES! Oh my goodness. I can't be certain but I think I'm wearing stirrup pants.

I think this was the same year; I liked being a witch.

And I am ashamed to admit this, but in the five Halloweens we've had with our own kiddos (six! if you count this year too!) I have NEVER made their costumes! Making clothes just isn't my thing. But my MOM, she's still got it! The first year, they were little pumpkins. My mom was sewing their pumpkin costumes while I was still pregnant.

Man, we ALL are babies! I can't believe how young we look! The girls are three weeks old in this picture. No costumes in this pic, but it's too cute not to share! Okay, back to costumes!

Precious! Their costumes were little zippered fleece sacks with stem hats. I *almost* brought them home from the hospital in these outfits but then changed my mind at the last minute.

Me with little tiny Arlene.

Pumpkin Lydia baby!

Year two of Halloween with the girls - witches! I looooved these witchy dresses. My mom made them, of course.

Look at those chubby little cheeks! And Lydia's "reading" because, you know, that's what you do, when you're a witch, on Halloween, you read while your sister hams it up. (The book is upside down!)

This picture cracked me up. That's pretty much how life was when the girls were babies - a blur!

Pumpkins, third Halloween! This was also, obviously, the year that we welcomed the fifth member of our family, a six-foot tall Jack Skellington.

Pumpkin Arlene.

Pumpkin Lydia.

That was the first year we took the girls trick-or-treating for real, and they got a haul of candy. They were so excited.

Year four o' Halloween. I had purchased that Jack costume when the girls were babies and this was the year it fit, so this is the year it was worn. Lydia loved being Jack. Arlene was Sally and my mom and I collaborated on her dress.

Now, last year, I bought both of their outfits. They wanted to be princesses so I thought it would just be easier to buy their costumes. Lydia sure did make a good Snow White. Arlene was a Princess Bride, complete with purple sparkle hair.

This year, Lydia is going to be a witch. She was inspired by seeing those pictures of me as a witch. She wants a green face and a blacked-out tooth. Arlene is going to be a gnome girl! Both purchased. I sort of feel guilty about not making their costumes! Next year, handmade!

Win one of my dolls!

I was invited to participate in a fun Halloweenish give-a-way this year. Click here (contest runs until Wednesday at 9 p.m.!) to enter for your chance to win this doll!

It's a painted button-eye Halloween doll! Check out the dolls in my shop (there's only a few, I'm restocking!) or click here to view my catalog of sold items!

Follow the instructions on the blog to enter into the drawing - you need to leave an email address or have an accessible blog so that you can be contacted if you win! Good luck! And if you like Halloweeny items check back to Mrs. B's blog - she's doing a number of give-a-ways each day until Halloween!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday ~ Happy Halloween!

Each week I share five of my Etsy finds. This week's Etsy Favorites Wednesday list is a Happy Halloween edition! It's the last Halloween edition of 2009 - boo hoo, Halloween season is almost over!


Insane Asylum Papercut Keys - how neat! The ones with the skulls are my favorite.


Pumpkin Mugs - these mugs look so scrumptious! Perfect for sipping a Pumpkin Spice Latte!


Wire vampire bat - I love the simplicity of this wire sculpture.


Boo Toy - click into the listing to see the rest of the photos of this! It's so clever!


Spiderweb Doily - I wish I could crochet little doilies; my mom is quite good at it. I just don't have the patience to work with such thin thread and a tiny needle. How cool would it be to have a large version of this spiderweb, to use as a tablecloth?

A crafty cousin collaboration

(say that three times fast, ha!) You may recall that for the girls' Alice in Wonderland birthday party, I made favors for the women, tea cup candles and a tea cup pin cushion for my mom. I also made a tea cup pin cushion for my cousin for Halloween:

I loved that thing so much it almost pained me to send it! But I'm going to make one for myself soon.

Well, I get these pictures from her yesterday! Look closely!

She one-upped the coolness of the pin cushion! She made SKULL PIN TOPPERS out of shrinkie dinks! Oh my gosh! LOVE THEM!!!

OMG

OMG. Hilarious!! Robert Pattinson in cross stitch. Click here. Should I make one?

Me vs. my crafts vs. Etsy

My Etsy shop and I have sort been having a love-hate relationship lately. I love Etsy, if you read this blog you know that, but my own personal shop, eh, I just don't know. It's either hot or its not. And there's really no rhyme or reason to it. I've enjoyed fabulous sales in the two years I've had the shop open, over 100, so I'm not complaining about that in the least. And I've met some crazily clever sellers and incredibly gracious buyers through my shop too. That's all good. It's just a tad annoying how sporadic my sales are. From May until August I had my shop stocked full of dolls. For the most part those have all sold, thanks in part to Homegirl who purchased most of them through wholesale orders to sell at the Country Living Fair.

I've had the same five dollies in my shop for awhile now, and their "view counts" (the amount of times people are clicking into the listing to view the item) go up and up ever so slightly ... but no purchases. I've been hesitant to make new stock to put into my shop, because I don't want to bust my hiney getting the stuff done, only to have it sit and sit and sit.

So I decided to purchase one of Etsy's cooperative advertising tools. It grants me one "showcase" plug for a 24-hour span. That day is today. If you go to the Etsy home page, you'll see the plug for the showcase, upper right: (aren't you impressed with my highlighting skills, haha!)

Once you click in there, you'll see my doll there amongst the others. The items rotate all over the page, so one time it'll be at the top, the next, in the middle, the next, at the bottom.

I've been scientifically tracking my items today, to see if this type of advertising is worth it, with the help of Heart-o-matic, a tool that allows you to track your hearts and your views. In the last 60 minutes, I've increased the views of Floral Fay, the dolly in the showcase, by seven views. This time last week, she received ONE view in a three-hour period. And what's more is that it appears that people are looking at her, then clicking over and looking at Lovely Lucy, the doll with the heart printed fabric.

So is it helping my sales? Well, maybe. It's too early to tell, I think. More people are definitely viewing my items, but I haven't received a purchaser yet. People are looking, but they're not hearting. Hearting is key, that's how I make my purchases, at least. If I don't make an on-the-spot purchase, I heart the item and buy it later. No hearts means what? I don't know. Any self-deprecating artist like myself (aren't we all that way?) thinks of course that their stuff sucks and how could anyone want to buy it blah blah blah ... I think I'm going through a bit of that, but I also know that my stuff has sold. I just can't figure out the exact key, the exact way, to pinpoint the A-HA! way to ensure more sales. I'm not even sure that exists. And I'm not even sure that I want to have a high demand for my items, because I'm not sure if I'd have time to fulfill lots of orders.

As I said, it's a love-hate thing going on. I'm struggling with not even being sure that I want to continue my shop ... I have ideas for new stock but then I consider the time involved, and I'm just not sure I want to invest it. Ho-hum. I'm torn because I think it would be wise to stock up my shop a bit with some of my baby-safe dolls and some of the regular dolls, and maybe some big dolls and some garland too, for the holiday season, but I'm not sure if I want to spend the money and the time to build up stock, and have it sit there until March.

And then the bigger, more pressing issue is that I'm signed up for a craft show November 14. I need to decide by Wednesday of this week if I want to be a part of it or not. I need to decide if I want to work on stock to get ready for the show, or just forget it. If I did make up some stock for the show, if it doesn't sell there, I can stock my shop with it. Win, win. But I don't know if I want to go through that effort in the first place! This lack of enthusiasm is concerning ... I don't know what it is. I'm still liking what I make, I love my little dollies and I've got some new ideas for new items that I am excited about, but in the evenings I'd rather just NOT work on anything. I'm hoping this is a phase.

Ahh, I just don't know! See what I mean!? Love-hate. Bash boom. But you, dear reader, thanks for reading my rant and ramblings! You get a gold star. Better yet, if you see something in my shop that you want, I'll knock a flat $5 off of it, off of anything in my shop, just for you, because you're special and I appreciate you reading my blog. Just send me a message through Etsy before you purchase so that I can adjust the price for you or make a comment on this blog and leave your email address.

In summation of this terribly long blog post, I don't think the Etsy showcase ad was a total bust. It cost just $15 and got me to really think about my shop. I was able to monitor my shop more closely today and think more about it than I have in the last month.

Some pumpkin carving fun!

This weekend we had a little pre-Halloween fun at my cousin's house. Pumpkin carving! Here's some cute pics!

We had an AWESOME hayride! Sarah's house has a ton of land behind it. The hayride was so much fun!

Lydia was having fun!

Serious business...

Okay, so my daughter wanted to do a pumpkin of "Mike" - not her daddy Mike but of my cousin's husband Mike. She draw "his face" and then her grandpa helped by adding some wire glasses.

She's so proud of her "Mike Pumpkin"

Lydia put her name on the side of her pumpkin.

My pumpkin - a happy vampire, heehee.

All of the pumpkins!

My zombie lamp shade

Awhile back, I saw a lampshade on Etsy that had felt zombies glued to the inside of it; when you turned the lamp on, the zombie shadows showed through. I didn't want to purchase an entire lampshade, but I was inspired by the idea and wanted to make my own, temporary version of it. So, I simply got a piece of white paper, found a clip art image of a zombie on the ol' internet for inspiration, sketched it up, cut it out, used double-sided tape, stuck it to the inside of the lampshade - instant zombie lampshade!!

One, two, Freddy's coming for Mike ...

... to wish him a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! My sweet husband is turning a year older today! And even though that might seem like a pretty macabre photo to celebrate one's birthday, trust me, for my horror-loving-husband, it's perfect. Mike's my fellow Halloween lover (funny story: when we first started dating in college he commented on how cool the creepy eyeball drapes were that I had hanging in my bedroom - we had just started dating and were talking in my room - (teehee) - and from then on we knew we were destined for each other!), he's the best dad to our most precious little pumpkins, he's silly and goofy and makes me laugh, he's practical and the voice of reason on many occassions, he calms me down if I'm in freakout mode over something trivial, and he's my BEST friend! Happy Birthday Mike!! I love you!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - another Halloween edition!

I can't believe Halloween is a week and a half away! That sort of snuck up on me! I don't even have my kids' costumes yet! I gotta get on that pronto. So, while I'm busy trying to talk my daughters out of being Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty for Halloween (I think two little girl vampires would be darling!) you take a gander at this week's Etsy Favs list!

DANGER Zombie sign! ~ Hilarious! I've been into zombies this year; I think they are popular because I've seen them a lot on Etsy too. Do you remember my letterpress Danger Zombies RUN sign that I bought awhile ago? Link here. I like that this sign is vinyl on metal, seems more substantial, and more ... serious. And you know what, it's only $12 - that's quite reasonable for warning the masses about the undead.

Creepy doll print ~ WHOAH! Creepy. Scary. I know. But yet, I sort of like it too. Think it would freak my children out? Yeah, I think so too. Speaking of, Wrestling Kitties, I know your aversion to dolls ~ look away, look away now! This seller's name is CreepyDolls. Quite apt, yes? She's got some interesting prints in her shop besides this one. This one is less creeptastic. But still freaky.

Metal pumpkin belt buckle ~ My darling husband's birthday is Friday so I had to include an Etsy find for him! I really doubt he'd wear this pumpkin belt buckle unless it was just around the house, he's more of a plain-clothes kind of guy, but I do think it's pretty cool!

Halloween Coloring Book ~ this book is cute in and of itself but it's also clever because it's a collaboration of 15 Etsy artists. My kids would get a kick out of coloring these pages! And I would too!

Beard tie etching ~ Mr. plentiful Beard here is looking at you. Leering, in fact, behind those dark glasses. And thinking he can hide you in his top hat and take you home. Never trust a man with a beard so long he can wear it as a tie.

Living in: Edward Scissorhands

Check out this fantastic compliation of Edward Scissorhands-inspired items compiled by Amy Merrik at the Design*Sponge blog. I sure do love that blog. I suggest you check it out! And I love Amy's "Living In" posts. Every Tuesday she writes a post about products that are inspired by books or movies, with links on where you can actually purchase the items! She did one on Dirty Dancing! See all of the "Living In" posts here. This week's Edward Scissorhand's edition is so splendid.