adventures in pinksugarland

in true andrea fashion, i squeaked in some valentine’s at the last minute this year. (although this time i’m actually blogging before the holiday so i guess it’s a step in the right direction!)

this year, it was a wee bit more fun than usual because i collaborated with my talented pal christine from just bella to design this fun printable to go along with some cute eyeball rings we picked up at michael’s. and when i say “collaborated” and “we”, i mean christine found the rings and the came up with the concept, and did a lot of the design work while i kept her company ;) (thank goodness for creative friends during a month that has mostly been filled with thinking about logos and website design all that has been going on behind the scenes!)

the two of us make a pretty awesome team and i think we came up with a rather cute final product (and according to lila, the cards and the rings were a huge hit with her classmates).

so, just in case that you have some googly eye rings hanging around and are in need of the perfect valentine to washi tape them to in time for saturday (or if you just really want to be extra prepared for next year), we have the printable available for download here.

happy valentine’s day!

november means celebrating the birthdays of lila and cole, and half a dozen of their best buddies. first up, a slumber party (complete with dream catchers) for a sweet newly six year old. happy birthday miss tessy — we sure love you!

having children has quickly made halloween one of my favourite times of year. any excuse for a celebration is a good one for me. one that includes crafting and sugar, even better.

if this post isn’t huge enough for you (ha!), you can see iphone photos on instagram (#monstersandspidersandghostsohmy). (thank goodness for the one photo of oscar with his “fire” in on ig because he boycotted it the rest of the week.)

costume prep was a little less stressful this year as most of the kids’ costumes (cupid, scuba diver, dragon and hot air balloon) were ones i had designed for my costume feature in better homes and gardens, the jet pack was a hand me down from a couple of years ago, and the spaceman was lila’s old ballerina robot costume with some modifications! (it was so fun to reimagine that one for cole this year.)

lila already has a few costume ideas up her sleeve for next year — i can’t wait!

spooky print is a digital download from hello tosha designs.
tutorials for the bhg costumes are available until november 3 here.

lila’s hot air balloon had a bit of an incident with a tree — nothing a little duct tape couldn’t fix ;)

hope everyone had a wonderful halloween!

it’s kind of impossible to come up with the right words in situations like this — it’s definitely another of those dream [that i never knew i even had] come true moments. these are photos of the halloween issue of better homes and gardens magazine. inside, you will find a 12-page feature of halloween costumes i designed and photographed.

i don’t really know what to say beyond that. other than this is so incredibly cool. and thank you. thank you to the people at bhg. thanks to mark for putting up with the massive mess that went into creating this, and every other costume, party, and random craft i’ve ever decided needs to be done right now. and thank you to all of you. who come here to check out this little blog, and who pin and share the images i take and crafts i make, and who hire me to photograph your families. we have a pretty good thing going here in pinksugarland, and lots of that is thanks to you :)

this is totally reading like an acceptance speech, but whatever. i’m happy, and i’m thankful.

lila picked out a succulent and a pretty pink pot, we fancied it up with some thank you flags made from wooden skewers, paper straws and card stock, and included a gift card to our favourite bookstore — the perfect send off to an amazing teacher.

(if you happen to see this post, i hope you know how much we appreciate you and all that you’ve done for lila this year. she has grown so much over the past ten months (see the evidence here) and came home from school every single day excited about what she was learning. we couldn’t have wished for a better kindergarten experience for her. thank you.)

a stack of wood veneer + custom illustrations by my favourite five year old + some cutting and gluing = the perfect family portrait for the man of the house.

we love you mister hanki.

we had a little party for the littlest hanki. many more photos to come!