When planning for PodCamp NYC this year, it was suggested that the volunteers wear bright, matching tee shirts to identify themselves. Someone jokingly suggested crowns instead, and I thought how great it would be to pass out cloth crowns at the first volunteer meeting and let everyone know they had to wear them the entire time.

It reminded me of this one time in high school. We were planning to have our formal on a small cruise boat, and Jen, who was class vice-President, announced to the Senior class that, due to changes in state law, anyone under age 21 aboard a water vessel had to wear a life jacket the entire time.

All of the pretty popular girls began a rapid, shreiky decent into mass freakout while Jen somehow managed to keep a straight face and assured them it wouldn’t be “that bad”.

cloth crowns available at Cakies

Shortly after Halloween, Rob and I were in Target. We swung by the clearance section to see if there was anything worth scooping up, and boy oh man, was there ever. I scored eleven boxes of Halloween funfetti cake mix for 40 cents a box. Coolness upon cool, the sprinkles, or “funfetti”, are packaged in their own little foil container, and the main package is plain white cake mix, so if you’re making cupcakes for something other than Halloween, you can have plain.

I used that mix and some vanilla frosting to make Jen’s birthday cupcakes. Since the cupcakes I made for her birthday last year were so chocolaty and rich, I made these light, airy and sweet. The bears are Teddy Grams from 100-Calorie packages. Normal Teddy Grams are bigger and thicker, and would work well on a cake, but these are tiny and cute, about 3/4 of an inch tall, and just right for posing on cupcakes.

The hearts are purple Necco conversation hearts stuck on backwards. Grandma and I ripped open a bunch of little boxes and picked out all of the purple ones. I made the sign earlier in the day out of a cut-out square of poster board, with a strand of uncooked spaghetti taped to the back of it for the stick. Silver candles completed the look.

So fun!

Saturday is Jen’s birthday, so I dedicate this post to her and her bun-in-the-oven. It’s educational.

Happy weekend.

I had been working on a marketing project for a while, but it was all back end stuff. When the time came to actually contact people, I had to figure out what email address to use. My personal one is personal. My blog one would be pretty inappropriate (I use the “eff werd” too much). And anyway, who wants to work with some girl who is emailing out of blue? So I started a company.

If you click on the picture you can see the site.

The copy isn’t exactly the way I want it, because I wrote it rather quickly. Najla, copywriter extraordinaire, is working on that for me.

I call it Pink Moose because I really, really like the word “Moose” (MOOOOOOOSE!) and I figured the logo would be great. Pink can be saccharine, but when it’s a pink moose, it’s less Pretty Pretty Princess and more whimsical and funny and not too serious.

I’m not sure if this is the permanent logo, but it’s what Rob came up with in a pinch, and it’ll do. I’m NOT paying someone to design a logo, and my attempts at drawing a moose have left me regretting skipping most of the second semester of my illustration class in college. (I got a B anyway, a fact that my then-boyfriend found deplorable, because I was literally never there.)

I’ve done marketing like this for another company. I enjoyed it (even though the pay was poo) because I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and I also got an abundance of tiny secrets on “going the extra mile”. For instance, she insisted that any paperclip that was not red (to match her logo) was to be banished from the office! Sounds weird, but made all of our outgoing, paper-clipped packages look SO special. All of my paperclips are going to be pink! I also learned a lot of what I would do if the firm was MINE: things like handwritten labels (we HAD to have typed in her office, and I always wanted to hand write them) and recycled material packaging and paper.

I’m pretty excited, although I’m overwhelmed because my home office is not up to par. That is tonight’s task, along with making cupcakes for Jen’s birthday tomorrow. These are the ones I made for her last year:

This year I have something pretty special planned, too!