Etsy Progress:)

Hi all! Just wanted to pop in and share what's been going on with my Etsy store since I went "live" a little over two weeks ago (August 8). When I first launched it, I did lots of promoting on Facebook and Instagram just to get people aware of what I was up to. Fortunately I have some awesome people in my life who have looked and shared and all that good stuff, so I've been able to get some traffic to the site! At this point, I have 871 views, which is actually really good! Since Etsy is filled with hundreds of thousands of items, it's actually not the easiest to be randomly found through the site itself. They really emphasize the importance of using keywords so that people can find you when they search for certain items. Needless to say, I've done LOTS of research on it and have worked very hard to ensure this isn't all for nothing. Anyway, in just a couple short weeks, I've made three sales. Woohoo!!! A big, HUGE thank you to my sister-in-law Casey for being my very first sale! She bought these lovely little envelopes:

Pink and Navy Envelopes

Shortly after Casey bought those, I received a message on Etsy from a girl in Pennsylvania who really liked one of my banners and was wondering if I could make it in a different color scheme. After running to the store to buy some stuff that fit her needs, I came up with a few options, sent her some photos, and the rest is history. She absolutely loved what I came up with, and so I was able to successfully complete my first custom order! Here are a few pictures, and I've also decided to sell it in my store to others as well!

Find it here!

She even sent me a thank you email and a picture with the banner up in her room. How fun!

Oddly enough, the same day she officially bought her banner, another totally random person simply bought two packages of my blue confetti (1,200 pieces in each pack). Because I was leaving for a long weekend, I spent my Wednesday night last week punching 2,400 circles out of cardstock. Whew, that was a long night and a sore hand! ;) I was able to pack up and ship out the confetti before the weekend though, so hopefully she will be happy to have received it sooner than expected! Below is a picture of what she bought and how I packaged it!

Last but not least, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was planning to take some items to the store called The Regal Find to see if they would be interested in selling some of my stuff. I did that last Wednesday, and she took 17 of my items to start with! I only have one item of everything made up at this point, so she cleared my 'ready to ship' stock. Totally fine by me! :) So that's craziness, folks. I have sold stuff on Etsy, and I've also got some stuff in a store in hopes that it will sell! I may go in there at some point this week to see my stuff out in the store; it's still pretty trippy for me to think about, so I'd love to see it actually happening! Below is what I packaged up the night before.

Here is a picture of all the stuff she took from me at the store. I'm still so excited! I'll find out in the next week or two if I sold anything. In the meantime, I'm just happy my stuff is out there for people to see. I'll let you know if I end up stopping in or selling anything.

Hope to keep the momentum going - may be a little more challenging because the school year will be really crazy for me in the beginning. That being said, I'm going to try reallllllllly hard to not lose site of this because it makes me super happy. Wish me luck, friends! And don't forget to PartyHappier:).

I'm LIVE on Etsy!

So, you've seen me posting a lot recently about making crafts and wanting to sell on Etsy and all that good stuff. Well, I'm doing it. It's official! I have been working hard over the last month or so to take pictures and create listings and do my research on how to hopefully make this work for me. (Well, I've been doing that research a lot longer than a month, but the process has been really amped up over the last month.) Anyway, I have a bunch of products made and am super pumped about the fact that I went 'live' with several things for others to see - and hopefully buy! I know it's not magic, and I'd love for it if a million people found my stuff and started buying immediately. Reality is, that's not going to happen. Not without a little help from my friends;). So, if you're curious about my shop and want to see what I've been up to, please feel free to check it out: www.partyhappier.etsy.com.

Here's a snapshot of some of the stuff on my home screen!

I came up with PartyHappier as my shop name because I felt like it really captured what I want my items to do. Whether it's note card sets, banners, confetti, or whatever else I come up with, I want nothing more than to brighten people's days! Nothing wrong with partying a little happier and enjoying life, right?! :) I hope you enjoy what I have to offer, and please, please feel free to pass along the word to people you think might like these items! Stay tuned, because trust me when I say I have LOTS more on the way! :)

Even if I never sell a darn thing, at least I can rest easy in the fact that I have loved every minute of creating these awesome items. Feels wonderful to tap into my creative side! :) Thanks to all my friends and family for all the support! It means the world to me. PartyHappier, ya'll!

Sneak Peek!

Hi friends! I hope you are all doing well. I am doing pretty darn good, but I will admit that I'm absolutely terrified by the fact that it is August 1 today.  One more month and school begins again. Ahhhhh. Why, WHY must the summer always go so fast?! I hate it. It's funny, I work in a school (by choice), and I oddly think I dread the start of the school year now more than I did when I was a kid in school. Weird! ;)

Fortunately for me, the summer has allowed me to really take some time and focus in on my crafting stuff. I have NO idea what will come of it, but I've been having so much fun making all sorts of goodies. I've even started making all my draft listings in Etsy, and hopefully within the next week or so, I'll be able to go LIVE! Eeeeeeeeee! I don't know if anyone will want my stuff, or if they'll even find it amongst all the other stuff on Etsy, but that's not going to stop me from trying! :) I've been working really hard on getting my listings ready to go - good descriptions, eye-catching pictures, keywords galore - in hopes that it will help people find me! You best believe I'll share the link with you once I have something to show! In the meantime, I just wanted to give you a sneak peek of some of my creations. Enjoy!

Neon Citrus Confetti (Above)
Pastel Confetti (Below)

No real name for the above one, but I love how bright and sassy it is! :)

Pink Chevron Collection:).

Rainbow Stripes & Dots!

That's all you get for now. Stay tuned for much more! :)

Paper Madness!

Howdy, ya'll! Hope life has been treating you well! I just wanted to talk a little about some serious excitement that's going on inside of my head. You have all read about me wanting and loving to create crafty stuff, and that inspiration has recently been renewed. Not too long ago, L and I were wandering around downtown Middleton just exploring what it has to offer. We happened to stumble across a store I've never heard of called The Regal Find. They have all sorts of unique items in there, many of which are created by the store owners and people just like me! They do sort of a 'consignment' shop arrangement, where, if they are interested in what you create, they will sell it in their store, and you get some of the profit. I have NO idea if they'd like my envelopes or anything I come up with, but I feel really inspired to give it a shot. If that goes well, maybe Etsy isn't too far behind. And if worst comes to worst, then at least I have some fun little things to give people I care about! :)

Over the last week or so, I've been obsessing over an online company called Oriental Trading Company. They have TONS of stuff, including a huge variety of cardstock and scrapbook paper that I adore. Just yesterday, I made a pretty significant paper purchase that will allow me to create a ton of unique and fun envelope sets - which is my first plan of attack. I ordered a sample box to see if my envelopes would fit inside, and if so, then I want to create a variety of sets of envelopes to be packaged nicely. If I'm lucky, they'll sell. If not, then at least I'm still creating (which I love) and can brighten someone's day with what I make! Below are just some pictures of the paper I ordered yesterday; some are themed and some are just fun. My apartment is about to become a madhouse! ;)

 Rainbow Paper Pack

Neon Paper Pack

Full Color Spectrum Paper Pack

Patriotic Paper Pack

 Bright Christmas Paper Pack

Winter Wonderland Paper Pack

 Christmas/Winter Paper Pack

 Get ready for some fun creations coming your way, folks! :)

New Year. New Hopes.

Can you believe another year has come and gone already?!? I sure can't. As a child, you're always told not to wish time away because it will fly faster and faster with each passing year. As a child, you're also too dumb to pay any attention to that nonsense. ;) I remember always being so anxious to hit various age 'milestones,' but in recent years, I can't help but get a little sad thinking about how quickly life passes by. On the other hand, since I've been out on my own, I've been pretty darn lucky to have my days filled with a lot of great people and even more exciting happenings. It's this weird tradeoff; I'm lucky to have things to do and people to spend my days with, but I also long for peace and quiet where time goes slow. I don't think that tension will ever disappear. All I can say is that I couldn't agree more about time going too fast as I get older (and I'm pretty old, 28 big ones now;), and I want very much to make good choices and to simply enjoy my life as I move forward in the days to come.

And.....cue the 'new year reflections.' I don't like that it takes a new year to make me more reflective or to force me into reevaluating my daily life. But hey, something's gotta do it, and I sadly do really enjoy having moments like today where I think about all the good possibilities, goals, and hopes for the year(s) ahead. As always, I don't necessarily do resolutions, per se, but I do have a few things in mind for the coming year. Please don't jump to point out my failures over the coming weeks and months; just know that I am trying to do things right, whether that's in health, relationships, finances, etc. Some may be quite similar to my plans over the past couple years, but never hurts to revisit and reevalute things that are important. Here goes! 

1. Save more.
Wow. Starting out 2014 like I did 2012, with finances on the brain! There is one exciting thing that I'm really pumped about for this year, though. I don't know if I ever shared this, but during college, I managed to rack up almost $8,000 in credit card debt. Ahhhhhh. Long after I stopped using the card, I was still making hefty payments (probably about $300 per month) to try and whittle it down, but almost $100 of that would go straight to interest. UGH! I felt like I was getting nowhere... Well, a wonderful person who shall remain nameless in this scenario decided to help me out by paying that whole bill and allowing me to then make payments to him without worrying about interest. Since June 2012, I have been making $300 monthly payments to get that balance down to zero, and I only have THREE more payments to go until that person is completely paid back! I can't even tell you how excited that makes me. Where my excitement comes in now is thinking about what to do with that 'extra' $300 per month come May. No, I don't plan to go on a shopping spree. I have a number of things I want to put it towards (i.e., an emergency fund, retirement, student loans, etc.). Thing is, not sure where to focus it for now. Possibly a combination of all three things, hard to say. My student loans haunt me just about every day, and I want nothing more than to just get them paid off as soon as humanly possible. However, there are some variables in the air that make me hold off on that because there is a chance I could get the remainder of them forgiven after 120 payments. Sure would hate to pay $500+ per month to pay them off in 10 years, only to find out I could have gotten much of that forgiven had I waited. The more I think about it, the more I think I'll continue to make my normal monthly payments on those, maybe a little bit more, and then focus on building up at least a small emergency fund/savings and putting the remainder into retirement. I'm pretty lucky with retirement. Being employed by the state, 7.1% of my salary is automatically taken out and put towards retirement, and the university matches that. So, that alone is a great chunk of money being put away for me. Just under a year ago, I also started putting $75/month into a Roth 403(b) (on top of what's taken out of my salary), so that's another exciting thing. I'm thinking of possibly just making that total $200/month instead of $75, and then seeing how I want to use the other money. Regardless, just knowing that $300 monthly payment is almost off my back is such a thrill for me. I'm glad I got it done, but now I can put it towards stuff that really matters. My last bit about saving money is that I will be making an honest attempt to spend significantly less time and money at Target. Sounds silly, but it really is an issue for me. It's so close to us, and I'm often lured in because of the steals on the Cartwheel app, but after getting the things I need, I usually always buy at least one thing I could easily live without. So, I resolve at this point to try and limit my Target trips to 2-3 times per month. Still sounds like a lot, but for me, that's sadly a drastic reduction. We'll see how that goes! ;) 

2. Run (and train) for another 5k.
You may or may not recall that I ran my first 'real' 5k last April. I did the Color Run in 2012, but since I walked most of that, I don't really count that as my first 5k. We did a run last April to benefit Parkinson's, and I actually gave it some real effort. Granted, I didn't train really at all, but I ran as much as I could in the actual race. It took me 46 minutes, which is not too good at all. If you don't know, a 5k is equal to 3.2 miles, so that was about 14 or so minutes per mile for me. I know I could do way better, and I'm determined to try. Regardless of whether or not I'm ready, I will be participating in the same run to benefit Parkinson's this coming April, and I'm hoping I have a much better time to report! I'll probably do some cardio activities to help prep me for that too, so overall, I hope to get myself in good condition for it! Perhaps it's time to revisit that Couch25k app on my phone again. :)

3. Get my craft on...again.
As you've seen throughout some of my posts in the past year, I have really gotten into the whole crafting thing as of late. I love making envelopes and cards for people, and I could literally spend hours in scrapbooking aisles or in the 'party'  and 'office' sections of any store. I live for that shit. Problem is, I often get busy and let my love for it get pushed to the side because I'm too busy for other things. And this sounds soooooo stupid, but the fact that my my craft materials are semi-buried in a tote in my coat closet makes me a little less inclined to use the stuff more regularly too. I wish I had a room designated as an office or as a craft space. Every inch of my apartment is filled to the max, so it's not like I can just have stuff laying around without it overtaking my space. In my dream world, I'd have either a 2-bedroom apartment where the second bedroom was my 'work' space, or a house that had an entire room dedicated to it. When I want to craft now, I have to dig so much stuff out just to get at what I want, and it frustrates me. Not sure what the perfect solution is, but I really want to stop making excuses and spend more time on it this year. Certainly makes sense because it's one of the things I love doing most! :)

4. Stay positive (mostly about work).
As most of you know, I moved to Madison for a new job in September 2013. Super exciting for me to move here, to be closer to L, and to start a new chapter after a somewhat frustrating end to my time in Milwaukee! In my short time on the job here, however, many things have already changed in regards to my responsibilities. Go figure, since that's exactly why I needed to get away from UWM. Anyway, in learning of all the people who left our office, and all the responsibilities that will be shifting my way in the upcoming months, I've already become a bit negative and stressed about it. A lot of things have been thrown at me, and quite honestly, I often wonder how on earth I'm going to handle and manage everything. Then I need to remember that everyone else in the office feels that way too. That's good and bad. Good because they can relate, but bad because they have little sympathy and can't take much off my plate since they are swamped too. We have lost three people (including my supervisor who retired somewhat unexpectedly) and gained none, so we are trying to maintain everything that was being done before those people left, and then are expected to do even more now, despite no new people being hired. Not ideal. I think I'm just a little more vocal about my stress, so I need to be a little more careful and mindful. Everyone always tells me that the morale in the office isn't usually like this, but it seems everyone's a bit down since I started, and it's tough to handle and be around sometimes. Anyway, I am going to do my best to go into this all with a positive attitude, and if and when I am feeling beaten down and burnt out, I want to ensure that at the very least, I can take it all as a learning experience and make it work for me. Everything happens for a reason, right?! :)

5. Appreciate the little things.
I feel like I appreciate life a lot, and I can recognize how even little things make a big difference, but I think I can always be better. Ever since I moved to Madison, I have been fortunate to spend most days with L. We can be watching movies, talking, cooking, anything, and I am purely content. We often tell each other how special the other is, but sometimes I get caught up in the daily cycle of things and forget to count my blessings. L treats me well, he cooks for me, he listens, he does dishes, he supports me, etc. Need I continue? Anyway, sure, I can say 'thank you' after a good meal, or I can pick up a tab here or there, but I want to contribute more and I want to give him just as many things to be appreciative of in the days to come. Besides my relationship, I just want to be more thankful in general for the life I lead. I'm healthy, I'm happy, I have an apartment and a car and a job and a body that can do everything I need it to. All of this happens day in and day out, and because of the worrier I am, I probably do think about it crumbling more than the average person; that being said, however, I still know I could be better at not taking things for granted. I lost one of my close friends this year and it was one of the hardest things I've dealt with in awhile. Probably in my whole life, actually. He always used to text me when he saw my car in Colby to see if I could hang. Last text I have from him was wondering if I was around and I opted to stay in rather than going out, never thinking it could be my last chance to see him. I don't get mad or blame myself, but I do think about it. And I don't ever want to take my family or friends or health or circumstances for granted. Sounds bad, but maybe if I start treating people like it's the last time I'll see them each time I see them, I will appreciate them even more. Or maybe that could depress me. ;) We'll see how it goes. I just will keep on living my life and thanking my lucky stars for everything I have and all the things I can experience.

Okay... I know there are a million things I want to accomplish this year, but these are a few big things on my mind. Save money, exercise, get back into some things I love, stay positive, and be appreciative. Let's do this, 2014!

Holiday Spirit!

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. I am doing decently well, as well as can be considering I've been battling one of the worst colds I think I've ever had for almost two weeks. I think I have experienced just about every symptom, from sore throat to congestion to coughing (at one time, I'm pretty sure I coughed up a little blood, eee!) to sinus issues. After coming back to Madison from a lovely few days at home for Thanksgiving, all I wanted to do was rest and relax. Fortunately for me, L is so wonderful to me and immediately started nursing me back to health. He gave me tea, water, chicken soup, and more. I fought him hard on the amount of water he made me drink (three 32 oz. bottles in one day), but I really do think it helped a lot. While a few of my symptoms are still lingering, I think I'm finally on the mend. Woohoo!

Me being on the mend meant a few things for us this past weekend - we went to Target on Saturday to check out a couple sales (one of which involved me getting 20 rolls of wrapping paper. Uh.....yeah.), we went for a 3-mile walk in the brisk air, and we spent some good time relaxing. Great day! On Sunday, we laid around for awhile in the morning, went to Target again (yes, we have a problem) to get some cooking supplies, and then we ended up spending much more time in there than we expected because we got caught up in the Christmas decorations. That was my fault because I just wanted to peek, but then L informed me that our apartment complexes do a holiday decorating contest each year, and top prize can get $100 off their rent. Once we talked about that, he got super excited and we basically filled our cart with stuff to decorate my balcony. We just pooled our resources and are decorating my place rather than decorating his and competing against each other, so we went nuts! After we got home and started decorating the balcony, we realized we didn't have enough lights to do what we wanted. So, we ended up going back to Target AGAIN to get more stuff. Lucky for us, both of us went shopping at Target on Black Friday (we went separately), and we each got a 20% off coupon for purchases this week. We made good use of those coupons, as well as my Cartwheel app and 5% discount for using my Target debit card, so I went from about zero holiday decorations to about a million! ;) We haven't finished decorating quite yet, so I'll wait to provide pics, but we're pretty excited. On the night the apartments get judged for decorations, L wants to be outside on my balcony in a Santa suit to add to the affect, so that'll be hilarious. Just for that night, we'll also move the Christmas tree out there so it'll look extra awesome. I really think we could win, or at least place. I hope so. It'll help make up for the cost of everything we bought, ha! Beyond all of this, L also brought over his artificial tree, so we put that up last night and decorated it, so I'm super excited. Definitely in the Christmas spirit, probably more than ever! Not sure what's gotten into me this year, but I've felt more into the holidays for one reason or another. Kinda fun! And I finally have enough money that I was able to by everyone in my family something for Christmas. Can't wait to give everyone their presents!:)

Take a look at a few pics from Thanksgiving and from our holiday adventures. Can't wait to share more!

 The start of pictures with all the kiddos! Here's me with Drew and Nash!

(Sorry in advance for the blurry quality of many of these. :-/ Sad.)

 Uncle Randy with Homer!

 Me and Drew!

 Me and Lia!

 Me and Peyton!

 Me and Tayt!

 Me and Austyn!

 Goofing around with brother and uncle Jake!

 Me and Meg!

 The best Homer would give me;).

 Me and the sisters-in-law, Casey and Courtney! 

(And my new nieces and/or nephews in each of their bellies;))

 Drew opening her birthday present from Aunt Nae Nae!

 Minnie Mouse!!!!!:)

 Me and mama!

Now onto a few random ones from the weekend back in Madison!

 L trying out his Santa pajamas from Target. HA! I can't even tell you how much I love this:).

 Homemade chicken soup (yum!), water, and tea is just what doctor L ordered!

 All my Target wrapping paper! On Saturday after Thanksgiving, all their trees were 50% off (we didn't get one), and all their wrapping paper was buy one, get one free. Since I usually buy their more expensive stuff, this was such a steal!! Even when it goes on clearance after the holidays, I think I still will have gotten a better deal at this sale. How can one go wrong?! :) I'm seriously still so excited!

 After getting our first round of decorations, we got dressed up in Christmas colors to help us get in the spirit of decorating. We may or may not have looked exactly like this when we went back to Target a second time;).

 

Sneak peek of the balcony! This isn't anywhere near the final product, just a teaser. :)

 The tree lit up after we decorated it!

 Here it is again, but now with some presents under it. How fun!

 Feeling a little extra inspired this year, I decided to create a Christmas banner of my own. I often see them in catalogs like Paper Source, and after some thought, I figured it would be pretty easy to do it on my own. It wasn't tough at all. Just took some circle stencils and traced out some circles on tan, red, and green cardstock. After I cut them out, I glued each circle onto the next. For the letters, I simply printed them on regular computer paper and cut circles out of them too. For the string, I just taped it through the back of the circles. For the future, I may consider creating small holes in each circle and looping some twine in them so they stay in place a little better, but we'll see. For a first try, I was pretty excited!

Happy holidays, everyone!:)

Feeling Inspired!

I'm not sure what's gotten into me over the past couple days, but I've been spending FAR too much time online looking at various crafty items that are makin' me feel all inspired. :) Awhile back, I mentioned a bit of a 'dream wish' to make a bunch of fun items (well, mostly envelopes) and sell them on Etsy, but quite honestly, I've never known where to begin. I still don't. But that doesn't mean I can't try to find ideas and think of ways to make that happen someday. These thoughts are seriously what get me through my daily life sometimes. I mean, I know I have a good life, but I often dream about what it would be like if I could be so good at making crafts and doing things I really love that I could 'live' on that. Or at least bring in some income from it. L and I sometimes talk about that too. We can get ourselves in a decent place financially and then I could do this as my job. Will it ever happen? Probably not? But the possibility makes me swoon. :)

Anyway, there are a couple of things that are really exciting me lately. First, I have been doing some research on the Adobe Creative Suite of programs as a way to help me tap into my creativity and design things like cards and invites. It's a long shot, and I don't know that I'll ever do it, but I'm thinking about buying CS6 because I can get it for $199 through the university. In case that still sounds like a lot to you, keep in mind that if you were to buy it on Adobe's site, it would cost you a whopping $1,299 for the version I'd get. Seriously, I don't know how that's even possible. The Suite includes the following programs, some of which I don't even know what they do: Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, InDesign CS6, Acrobat X Pro, Bridge CS6, and Media Coder CS6. More than I'd ever need, but such a great deal. I've found some pretty good resources online that would help teach me the programs, but that is definitely more of a long-term goal. Just keeping my options open, and if I ever leave my job, I will be sure to order it before I go. ;)

The second thing I'm pumped about is that I got back to making a few envelopes the other night. Pretty simple, but kinda fun. I like the color combo, and I'm a fan of tiny envelopes! I really enjoy playing with different color schemes and patterns, so these are just a couple that I've come up with recently.

 

Beyond the envelopes, I started thinking about how it might be cool to either buy or make some fun stickers to include with those envelopes if I ever get around to selling them. I do have a product called Lick & Stick that allows you to role on a 'liquid,' and that liquid dries into the same stuff that's put on regular envelopes to seal them. You can lick it and everything, hence the name. So, up until now, I've just been using that or some glue to seal the envelopes. However, if people were to buy them, I thought having some stickers to seal the envelopes could be kind of fun too. Maybe I'd still put the 'glue' on there too and just give them the option to do either or. The cool gold glittery stickers below are jumping out at me right now (I love the triangular shape as well as the glitter), but of course they'd only go with certain envelopes. That would be my problem. So many of my envelopes have sassy patterns, so I'm not sure there's really a one-size-fits-all type of sticker for me. That doesn't mean I can't still love 'em. ;)

Courtesy of INKKIT

As I was looking through shops for triangle stickers, I also happened to run across a few other items that are just way cool in my opinion. I can't even possibly link to all the Etsy shops that I looked at today because I'm pretty sure it was about a billion of 'em, but there were a few things that made me feel really excited about the possibilities that could be in my future. One of those items, as weird as it sounds, is tissue paper confetti. I have always wanted to do something like that, and seeing that others do it too is pretty fun and makes me feel less crazy. Another item is tissue paper poms. I watched a number of tutorial videos tonight, and they seem way easier to make than they should. Now, I haven't tried them, so I shouldn't say that, because I will probably 'f' them up when I try, ha! But still. It's fun and easy and cheap compared to buying them for too much money in the store. Some of the people in Etsy who sell these types of items have sold so many products and have such great feedback, and I think to myself, "Hey, that could be me someday!" I'll just be counting on all of you to help me promote myself. ;) Below is some inspiration.

 Courtesy of PomLove

Courtesy of createandadorn

On a somewhat related note, many of you know that I have an unhealthy relationship with wrapping paper. I mean seriously, it's a problem. I don't even have any presents to wrap at the moment, but I have bought 9 new rolls within the last month alone. Damn it, Target! Walgreens has also been snagging me. I usually wait to pick up my prescription (birth control, eee;), and while I wait, I always seem to find myself in the party supplies aisle. It's dangerous. It's so bad that sometimes I don't even tell L that I bought more for fear that he'll judge me, ha! Anyway, with that love of wrapping paper also comes a pretty strong affinity for tissue paper as well. I always have some on hand and get excited whenever I see new patterns and designs. That dang Cartwheel app I mentioned recently hasn't helped with this problem either because there is currently a 10% coupon off one of Target's brands of tissue paper. I may or may not have spent a load of money tonight buying a bunch of tissue paper to add to my already large collection. At some point, I've gotta stop, but I credit this purchase on being inspired, so I figured I better roll with it. (Man, am I good at justifying my spending or what?!;) Below is a picture of the different tissue paper I bought tonight...

  (Don't mind the weird brown spots on my floor. My carpet is weird, ha.)

All that tissue paper made even more fun with a box to store it in. I already owned the box, don't worry;).

Based on the inspiration above, I think this tissue paper will come in very handy. Confetti, pom poms, the ideas are endless! :) Not to mention, it's just fun to adorn gifts with such pretty designs. I only wish everyone shared the same appreciate for pretty paper that I do. Oh well. And this brings me to another somewhat impulsive set of purchases. Because I'm weirdly into the confetti idea for some reason, I thought to myself, "How on earth am I going to make that happen?" Fortunately, I have a former scrapbooking background, and I used to be insane with the amount of stuff I had. I actually still have a lot of it, and it's proving to come in handy all these years later. Anyway, from those days, I remember these little 'punch' tools that I had, and so I started searching online for some of those. Boy, did I find some... Below are the ones I ordered. I think they will be pretty cool, and I'm excited for them to come in the mail! I think they will also be cool for decorating cards and envelopes too. Man, exciting! (All products courtesy of EK Tools.)

 1" Circle Punch

 Flag Punch

 1" Scallop Punch

 Swirls Punch

1/8" Circle Punch (I'm thinking of cutting these teeny holes in some of the other shapes to possibly create little banners or chains or something. Something kinda like this, except cooler;). Not really sure how that will go, but the little tool was only $4.99, and ordering it allowed me to get free shipping. Score!

The last thing really catching my eyes these days is something called Washi Tape. Ever heard of it? Yeah, me neither. Here's a description in case you're curious. There are tons of people on Etsy that sell the stuff. I can't believe I didn't know it existed until now! Why it intrigues me is because it could potentially allow me to buy more 'plain' colors of paper (cheaper) for envelopes and then spruce up the envelopes with the tape. Sounds kinda fun, right?! I have no idea how it would work, so I suppose I should just get a trial roll or two before I buy like the 25 rolls in my Etsy cart right now, huh? ;) Here's a taste of a few rolls I have my eye on.

Courtesy of TapeToGo (above and below)

 Courtesy of ModernTape

Courtesy of whimsicalcraftss (above and below)

So, there you have it, folks. This post has quite a few random thoughts in it, but that's just where my head is at right now. I am just really excited about this stuff. Even if I never try to sell it, or if I do and no one buys it, at least I'm having fun tapping into my creative side and treating my loved ones to some pretty things. I must confess, it's right now that I miss being in my old two-bedroom apartment because that spare bedroom would come in way handy at this point. It could have been my little craft room! How fun. Maybe someday I'll end up with a room like that. I think me and L would both love to have a room in a house that allowed us an opportunity just escape and create, so perhaps that is in my future after all. ;) Anyway, I'll keep you posted as this progresses! Thanks for reading!