decorating

I have so many talented and crafty friends. And just like me, many of them are working hard to use their talents to help bring in a little extra income for their families. I wanted to share some of their business ventures and crafty products with you and ask that you give each of them a quick look. Some of these great gift ideas might be *just right* for someone on your shopping list this year!

Elizabeth Bailey / E.Bailey Photography

Elizabeth Bailey is a photographer who specializes in newborn, children, and family portraiture in the Birmingham, AL area. She is available for on location and studio sessions. She blends traditional and contemporary posing, by taking cues from the personality of each child. She wants each session to be fun and enjoyable for everyone involved. You will enjoy a gallery full of carefully edited images that are a reflection of your child's true personality. Elizabeth offers a variety of prints options, as well as albums, storyboards, custom cards, gallery wrapped canvases, and digital collections.

Join her on Facebook to get the latest information!

Andrea's Blog Special
For the month of November: Contact me and mention that you saw this post on Andrea's blog and you can purchase a gift certificate for a session fee and enjoy $50 in print credit. That is a $125 value for $75. Gift Certificate will be good through December 2011. Give as a gift or keep for yourself!

Contact Elizabeth to purchase your gift certificate or schedule a session:
elizabeth@ebaileyphotography.com, 205-276-7219

Brina Bujkovsky / The Younique Boutique, inc.

Brina makes all sorts of heirloom quality hand painted ceramics, photo gifts, personalized name prints and more!

Rebecca Falkins / Lia Sophia Jewelry Advisor

Rebecca is a Lia Sophia jewelry advisor and loves holding jewelry parties in ladies' homes! It is a fun night of games, trying on beautiful jewelry and eating yummy snacks. Lia Sophia jewelry is coated in rodium and gold so no allergies or tarnishing. All of their jewelry has a lifetime guarantee!

To book a party, just visit her website at www.liasophia.com/rebeccafalkins! We give so much to our hostesses as a thank-you for letting us enjoy your home.

Sara Lohse / Purpose Driven Creations

Sara makes Sanity Sacs. A "Sanity Sac" is a hands-on discovery pillow that has many little treasures hidden inside of it, making it a self-contained toy perfect for traveling, waiting at the doctor's office, church, etc. These 5" x 7" fleece pillows have a clear viewing window, allowing the child to see the items in the bag... they are hidden amongst small poly-pellets. A laminated reference tag is attached (which includes pictures & a list of the items to be found). Great for ages 3-103!

Libby Pritchett / Libby Pritchett Designs

Libby designs digital scrapbooking supplies that can be used to create layouts digitally or printed to make paper layouts or altered art. Her collection includes a range of products including papers, alphabets, element sets, templates, etc.

The calendar template shown on the left can be used with your choice of digital scrapbooking kits. This is perfect for month in review pages, monthly "to do" calendars, or even calendar Christmas gifts. The Advent Calendar on the right is pre-designed and can be simply printed and assembled!

Shirley Ross / Close to My Heart Consultant

Shirley is an Independent Consultant for Close To My Heart stamping and scrapbooking supplies - and loving it! She is a self-proclaimed addict to all things papercrafting and loves to share what she learns with others. Her favorite Close to My Heart project uses a bleaching technique with stamps:

Brittney Smith / Main Street Memories

Brittney makes and sells these cute personalized envelopes and notepads that make perfect gifts for teachers, friends, and family members.

Also, if you are thinking about a Walt Disney World Vacation or a Disney Cruise, she's an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner through Main Street Memories, and can help you book your vacation, make your reservations, plan your days, and give you some GREAT inside tips on how to make the MOST of your vacation! (No-Cost Service!)

Andrea Steed / Signs by Andrea

Andrea makes personalized, hand-painted, weathered, wooden signs. Each sign is made-to-order, so it can say and look however YOU want it to look. Popular choices are last names, monograms, and favorite quotes. - Gallery of Signs - Sign Ideas - Win a Free Sign!

* Also check out her "Crafter-for-Hire" page of other personalized crafty products!

Lisa Tanner / Etsy Shop

Lisa makes fun, glittery decorations for your tree, your front door, your mantel - where ever!!

By Hand Boutique

For those who are local in Alabama, you might want to check out the By Hand Boutique market next weekend - November 12 & 13th at Community Presbyterian Church in Moody, AL. Several of my favorite friend/artists are going to be showcasing their work and selling all kinds of fun goodies!

• Virginia Tillery
• Shelley Burkett
• Christine Ousley
• Lisa Tanner
• and many other talented artists...

You can't beat this Buy One, Get One FREE deal! 

one for a wedding gift, one for a Christmas gift

one for a friend, one for you

one for his parents, one for yours

one for Thanksgiving, one for Christmas

one for the kitchen, one for the living room

Oh, the possibilities...

To take advantage of this offer, just place a separate order for each of your signs and put "November Special" in the comments section.  I'll then contact you with complete pricing and to verify that your order is *just* right before I get started on your custom-made signs.  E-mail me at signs@andreasteed.com with any questions or for special orders!

ENTER MY GIVEAWAY: FREE sign of your choice! (up to $45 value)

Share this sale & giveaway on your blog, Facebook, Twitter and/or to friends via email (be sure to include me - signs(at)andreasteed(dot)com - in the list of recipients), and you could win a FREE sign from Signs by Andrea! 

Leave a comment here for each way you've shared the sale and tell me how you shared it! 
Use this url: http://www.andreasteed.com/node/1069

A winner will be drawn and announced here on November 17th, 2010.

Good luck and happy sharing!

WINNER ANNOUNCED! Congratulations to Shaunda Eppes!  Check your email for details on how to redeem your free sign.

Nope, I wasn't *quite* finished with the Apple Cider line from Imaginisce after all. I had one more fun project up my sleeve. 

This year, all of my siblings & parents are headed south to AL for Thanksgiving -- at our house.  Which means we're cooking!  We usually have the same traditional menu for Thanksgiving every year, but we always have to hunt down the recipes from 2-3 different recipe books.  I thought it would be helpful to collect them all in one place.  

Ben suggested photocopying them and stapling them together.  Sure. That would work, but I knew this would be SO much cuter:

And it is. :)  Now let's just hope I got the recipes copied down correctly.

When Thanksgiving rolls around, I plan to photograph each dish to put on the back of each recipe card.  And add in the recipes for the few things that Ben always "wings" (like the turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, etc.)

I *so* wish I could find the website that inspired this idea -- because it was NOT my own.  But I failed to save it, and now I can't find it.  Just know it was from someone much more clever than me. :)  Happy Halloween!  

Though I'm no longer working at Maurices (it was just too hard on our family for me to be gone all weekend), I wanted to leave a little piece of me at the store.  So as a thank you to the staff for the great time I had working there, I made this sign to hang above the back room door:

It follows the motivational theme for the year for employees and though the photo doesn't show it all that well, it's also made in Maurices colors - turquoise and gray.  I went by the store yesterday to visit and it was hanging up.  Made me happy. :) 

So happy I volunteered to be in a "Rescues and Runways" fashion show for them next weekend.  Oh boy! Me, walking a dog on a runway?  Sounds ridonculous -- but fun! Come see me at Pet-a-Palooza at Veteran's Park in Hoover, AL next Saturday at 11am!  I'll also be donating a "Signs by Andrea" gift certificate to the silent auction.

This lovely sign that I made was purchased as a housewarming gift.  As usual, with all my custom orders, I loved the challenges it presented and was especially pleased with the result! 

I also love the saying, kind of a family mantra and good rules to live by.

What's YOUR family mantra?

4ft x 4in w/beveled edges, custom design

This afternoon I had an uncontrollable itch to create. Make *something*.  Get sticky. Make a mess.  All that good stuff.  It had been too long. 

This house-shaped wood tray was just asking to be turned into a Halloween decoration.  I could hear it.  It started out red.  I painted it black -- and then roughed it up a little bit.  I added a few Halloween themed papers and stickers from my stash, and then started cutting, trimming, glittering, and gluing.  Until I ended up with this:

Oh yeah, that's a little bit of Scrap Tutor wire-working.  It's been a while! 

Ahh, and it felt sogood to scratch the itch.

Supplies:

• wood "house" - garage sale find
• black spray paint
• sandpaper
• patterned paper - mostly My Mind's Eye Night Light collection
• Maya Road chipboard shape (for owl's body)
• Fiskars scallop border punch
• wire
• old jewelry
• metal frame
• circle punch
• small daisy punch
• heart punch
• Prima stencil mask set
• glitter pen by Sakura
• StazOn Jet Black Ink

Can we all just do a giant fist pump to the weather?  It is FINALLY below 90 degrees around here.  We think the 70s are downright chilly (not us...but some of these AL folks do).  The heat finally let up for October, and so it was time to get festive.  I hadn't planned to decorate this year, but when Ayla saw some decorations down the street, she was very interested in getting ours out too.  So I gave in and we spruced up the playroom with some of the decorations from Halloweens past:

This is SO my favorite month of the year.  I even bought 6 cans of pumpkin today! Let the pumpkin bread baking begin...

Welcome to all the KevinandAmanda.com blog readers!  Good luck on this week's sign giveaway!

I'm so enjoying reading your comments and hearing about which signs you'd love to have!  Remember, each sign is custom made, so the sky is the limit!  It can say anything you wish and if you're looking for something even more custom (not on the general order form), just let me know and we'll design something perfect together!

Don't forget to "Like" Signs by Andrea on Facebook to receive updates of new sign designs, sales & coupons!

Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks for all your great ideas about my wall collage.  In order to fill those frames and take advantage of a $1.99 flat rate shipping sale at Scrapbookpictures.com (that ends Aug 31st), I decided to go ahead and order some prints! Including that $1.99 shipping sale and a 15 prints free promo code (which saved me $3.75), I got all nine 12 x 12 prints for only $12.10 -- shipped.  Can't beat that.

I went with photographs of the kids playing outside.  No special, fantastic, clever theme, just pictures of them having fun outside. And I'm *sure* I'll want to change them at some point in the future.  But for now, I think this will do just fine.

That den/playroom project is *slowly* taking form...we finally got our toy cabinet fiasco taken care of (which involved re-cutting shelves, reordering doors, and lots of un-needed stress.)  They are now assembed, with shelves and doors. Yay!  The toys can finally be put away! Only took a month...  Oh, but there are still a few more things to take care of before the "after" photos... coming soon...I hope!