adventures in pinksugarland

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!

lila and i got started on our holiday decorating a little earlier than usual, so i thought i’d share our little creation in case anyone else wants to get up to some easter crafting this weekend!

the super simple steps:

1. create an egg shape with washi tape on a canvas (or paper!)
2. using the tape, divide the egg up into geometric sections
3. paint over the edges with white just in case any paint happens to sneak under the lines
4. paint your sections in whichever colours you like (we’re doing a neon theme this year!)
5. wait for the paint to dry and remove tape! (it took us a few coats of each colour)

happy crafting!