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Tips on Giving Your Home a Green Makeover – Guest Post by Caroline Smith

by MissMalaprop on September 2, 2010

The following is a guest post by writer Caroline Smith. I hope you enjoy!

To keep our planet in good condition for future generations, modern consumers are going to have to make eco-friendly choices in all of their activities. Changing the look of a home is an easy area in which to do this because of the great variety of green products which manufacturers are now providing. Eco-friendly materials are available for use on both the inside and outside of a home and can make it more comfortable and pleasing to the eye.

The Bamboo Worker - image courtesy of finnegan_again on Flickr

Flooring

When working to achieve a new look for the home, owners might wish to start with new flooring. The following are excellent choices for anyone wishing to be kind to the environment:

• Choose renewable bamboo for flooring or bamboo throw rugs for color.

• Consider carpeting or large rugs made from one hundred percent organic wool.

• Cover subflooring with various sizes of overlapping brown paper from grocery bags. Once arranged, glue down and cover with several thick coats of polyurethane.

• Collect left-over tiles from neighbors and friends and arrange in patterns to fit the floor space needing to be covered.

• Use composite decking materials for outer decks.

don't toss that sofa! use a slipcover to make it look brand new!

Furniture

Reusing old furniture can also help save natural resources and prevent landfills from overflowing. With the knowledge of just a few basic decorating tricks, it is easy to change a boring room into an up-to-date, family-friendly environment. The following furniture solutions are not very costly, but they can have a huge visual impact:

• Tighten joints, hinges and screws on older pieces of furniture and use eco-friendly paint that does not give off volatile organic compounds to give them a fresh look without adding contaminants to the air.

• Cover scratched or dented furniture with crocheted dollies or table runners and use bowls of pine cones, nuts, vegetables or fruit as centerpieces.

• Switch furnishings from one room to another; for example, use a bookcase for a bedside table or move a small filing cabinet from the study to the den, place a table cloth and lamp on it, and use it as an end table.

• Purchase inexpensive furniture covers for chairs or couches that have visible damage or are covered in outdated upholstery material.

pillow made from recycled men's shirt & burlap coffee sacks by REpurposingNOLA

Other Ideas

Other little changes that might brighten a home without causing environmental damage include the following:

• Choose fabrics for curtains or shades that are made from eco-friendly materials such as cotton, jute, silk, or hemp.

• Paint an accent wall or two with organic paint that does not give off volatile organic compounds in order to prevent air contamination.

• Use the fabric from old clothes, including colorful denims, to make throw pillows for the beds or couches.

The more thought that goes into the redecorating process, the more likely it will be a success. Consider all of the naturally sustainable products available, and items you already have that could be reused, before launching into any new home renovations. With a little care and attention you can give your home a green facelift knowing that your changes are environmentally-friendly.

This is a guest post from Caroline Smith, who loves furnishing her home with eco-friendly finds. She has a website about slipcovers for couches where you can find advice on extending the life of old furniture.

Want more ideas on giving your home a green makeover? Check out the book Green Living by Design: The Practical Guide for Eco-Friendly Remodeling and Decorating, available at Amazon.

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Caution – This Product is Hazardous – Guest Post by Kelly Kinnard

by MissMalaprop on August 17, 2010

Today’s post is a guest post by writer Kelly Kinnard. Hope you enjoy her thoughts on this subject!

Environmental Working Group's Shopper's Guide to Safe Cosmetics

Sifting through your personal products, you’ll notice the bulk of them declare warnings like: if swallowed seek help of a physician immediately, do not use in eyes, for external use only, or avoid contact with mouth or eyes. If the mixtures in these accoutrements are hazardous enough to merit caution, what are they doing to our bodies? Why would they be safe to wear on our skin?

The skin is the largest eliminative organ of the body – it both excretes and absorbs toxins. If the makers of these bodily products admit the constituents are noxious, it can’t possibly be wise to douse ourselves with them. And ingredients on the labels read more like a concoction of Love Potion Number Nine than anything comprehensible – unless you happen to be a chemist. Emphasis on the word chemist – because we’re dealing with conglomerations of chemicals.

What the warnings do not indicate is how the manufacturers arrive at their conclusions. They don’t tell you that they force feed cosmetics, perfumes, lotions and soaps to animals – including dogs and cats – in excruciating laboratory tests. They don’t tell you that they fasten bunnies into wheel like contraptions that prevent them from wiggling and then spin them around as machines drop nail polish remover into their eyes. The offending parties use bunnies because their eyes don’t have tear ducts and they have no natural defenses to wash out irritants.

If you question the torture involved in their animal testing practices, and I have, public relations representatives will mail pre-packaged kits of rosy information that in essence say, “It’s not that bad, we have to.” Right. There are no such laws and we are intelligent enough to realize that spraying perfume in our eyes will hurt. I don’t need to blind an innocent cuddly rabbit to figure that out. And I have yet to meet a person who’s ever gotten thirsty enough to hanker for a nice chilled glass of shampoo.

Clearly, these products are venomous to the world at large, and it is in our best interest to seek other options. Admittedly, sometimes purer products are harder to find and shopping entirely cruelty free is difficult, but you can make a dent to support a healthier life for both yourself and animals.

Orglamix Mineral Makeup is a better, cruelty free alternative to drugstore brands

There are numerous online resources to learn more about harsh chemicals in products as well as animal testing. An organization called Environmental Working Group provides an online database [aka Skin Deep, the cosmetic safety database] where you can search toxicity levels in all types of personal and household products. You may be surprised to find that many of the brands you’ve trusted are highly poisonous including baby shampoos, oils and lotions.

Countless animal rights groups are fighting to end animal testing and they provide online lists of companies that both do and don’t participate. Some of these include PETA, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, Stop Animal Tests, and the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals – to name only a few. Numerous product labels provide either wording or symbols to indicate they are not tested on animals. No product blatantly states that it is.

The safest bet is to buy all natural products, and they are most commonly found in health food stores. Most of these lotions, shampoos, cosmetics, perfumes and deodorants are derived from plants, herbs, flowers and natural oils. You still may not want to eat them, but you probably won’t die if you do.

The issues of a contaminated environment and cruelty to animals are far too large for us to solve absolutely, but we can contribute to the solution by taking an approach that is healthy for ourselves, our animals and our world.

Kelly Kinnard is a freelance writer. She is currently a resident writer for Online Schools, which researches areas of higher learning, online schooling, and education. In her spare time, she lives a natural lifestyle and supports animal rights, rescue and welfare.

Note from Miss Malaprop: many handmade bath and body and cosmetics lines are cruelty free and also free of many of the harmful chemicals found in drugstore brands. Check out my previous posts on handmade, eco-friendly bath & beauty products for better alternatives.

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Business2Blogger – Guest Post Review by Rosalie Gale

by MissMalaprop on August 2, 2010

I found out about Business2Blogger a few months ago, and signed up as a “blogger” to learn more about what the service is all about. I’ve also been considering trying out their service as a “business”, so when I noticed that my friend Rosalie Gale from Unanimous Craft had set up a business campaign, I contacted her to see if she’d write up a review of the experience once it was over. Below is her personal story of how a campaign on Business2Blogger works. Thanks for sharing this with us Rosalie!

Business2Blogger is – I believe – a relatively new service (their website says 186 campaigns have been completed in 2010). The basic idea is that if you are a business, you can sign up for an account and send out a campaign request to bloggers. You offer them something in return for blogging about whatever it is you want them to blog about. And if you are a blogger, you can sign up and then get emails that list the current paid blogging opportunities from businesses.

Both kinds of accounts have different levels of membership.

As a blogger, you can sign up for a “Basic Status” account or you can sign up for a “Preferred Status” account. As a Preferred status member, you get the emails about potential paid blogging opportunities four hours earlier than the Basic status members. The only thing required of you as a Preferred status member is that you must either post a banner or button on your blog – or write a blog post about Business2Blogger.

As a business, you can sign up for a free account and send out one campaign (a request for bloggers) per month. You receive contact information for 10 bloggers who said they would be interested in blogging about your topic. You can then pay $50 to obtain information about the ten most highly trafficked blogs who were interested in your campaign request.

I signed up for a Basic Status blogger account and a Business account.

My Business Campaign:
I sent out a request for bloggers to create lists on Unanimous Craft of their favorite indie business resources. They were free to choose the topic of the list. Then, I asked them to write a blog post about their list and the chosen resources. I offered one month of advertising in exchange for writing the blog post which – at the time – had a value of $20.

Then, I waited for quite some time. The same day that I had given up on ever hearing back, I received an email letting me know that people were interested in my campaign after all. Yay! I went to the website and got the contact information for 10 randomly selected people who indicated they were interested in creating a list on Unanimous Craft and writing a blog about it. I decided to contact all 10 bloggers, even though some of their sites didn’t really match the theme of Unanimous Craft. Of the 10, I heard back from 3 bloggers who seemed genuinely excited about the project. All three of them fulfilled the request:

List: Getting Over White Wall Syndrome
Blog post: http://www.suchcoolstuff.net/2010/07/unanimous-craft.html

List: My Favorite Places for Fun, Educational Items
Blog: Get 2 Scrappin’

List: Fort Worth’s Five Most Fabulous Etsy Artists Mommies Love
Blog: http://www.onemamasdailydrama.com/

I contacted Business2Blogger to see if they would allow me to get the contact info for the 10 bloggers with the highest traffic to facilitate this review, but I never heard back from them.

This month, I sent out an identical request for bloggers in a second campaign. I got a response back from Business2Blogger that the ad I was offering wasn’t enough compensation for the bloggers and that they like to have a minimum of $15 value. I wrote back and explained that ads on my site are $20/month and then I received an email asking me to resubmit my campaign – which I did.

I just got a notice that my campaign request was accepted and will go out in an email to bloggers on August 3rd.

Rosalie Gale of Unanimous Craft

My Blogger Account
I signed up for my blogger account at the Basic status member a couple of weeks ago and haven’t received any notices about paid blogging opportunities as of yet. I assume that I’ll get a notice on August 3rd when my campaign request is scheduled to go out. I may consider moving up to the Preferred status account once I participate in some of the campaigns as a blogger but I didn’t want to promote their service by adding an ad on my blog before I try it out.

Summary
In short, I think this could be a popular service and I like to see any way that bloggers and small businesses can receive compensation for what they do. I do, however, think that Business2Blogger has a few wrinkles to iron out in the smoothness of the service and response to customer emails. On a scale of 1-10, I would give them about a 6 right now.

I do like the tone of the website. It is written in a semi-sarcastic very casual manner that I particularly enjoy. As I said above though, they need to work on being responsive to emails. If you have a casual, personal tone to your emails and website content, you need to spend the extra effort to make your actual interactions casual and personal too.

Another concern is that the majority of campaign requests will be for bloggers to review products in exchange for samples. There is nothing wrong with this — as long as the receipt of compensation doesn’t cloud a bloggers judgment when reviewing the item. I hope Business2Blogger has a plan in place to ensure that they don’t get a reputation for being a service where businesses can pay for positive reviews of products.

All that said, I signed up for a second business campaign and I plan to offer up my blogging services once I get some opportunities in the mail — so I was satisfied enough with the process to go another round.

Rosalie Gale is a waterproof Shower Art maker, stand-up comedian and blogger who is currently obsessed with German board games, Bikram yoga and embroidery. She runs bARTer Sauce, an experiment in trading for art and odd objects, and she also launched Unanimous Craft – a directory of resources for Indie Business.

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5 Amazing Online Resources for the DIYer – Guest Post by Louise Baker

by MissMalaprop on June 28, 2010

open shelving - photo by ooh_food on Flickr

5 Amazing Resources for the DIYer

Doing it yourself does not mean doing it alone. Learning from the mistakes and successes of those who have gone before you will help you get it done right the first time without wasting time or money. A smart DIYer uses all the resources available to pull off a project that looks like it was done by a professional, but at a fraction of the cost. Occasionally this means consulting books or tutorial videos, but there is now a wealth of information in this area available online. From home improvements to finances, doing it yourself is easier with some Internet help. Check out these five amazing online resources for the DIYers before you begin any kind of project:

If you’re doing a home makeover
Start your designs by checking out www.designingonline.com. This website offers a program that shows your home design plans in three dimensions so you can get a true visual before making any changes. For everything from walls to couches, you can change colors and configurations. This is a far better (and easier) option than moving things around on graph paper. Before you move the couch two dozen times, click here and see a preview.

If you’re designing your own web page
You do not have to take an intense course in html and CSS coding to be able to put your own web page together. Use the resources available at www.killersites.com. Do-it-yourself web design can save a great deal of money and give you more control over the way your business or interest in presented on the web. By using templates and well-tested tips, even those clueless about technology can DIY.

taxes - photo by alancleaver_2000 on Flickr

If you’re doing your own taxes
There are a lot of DIY income tax programs on the market. Using an online program like www.taxact.com can simplify the process and ensure that you are getting all of the deductions for which you qualify. And the best part: it’s free! If your taxes are simple – no major investments, rental properties, life changes, etc. – then you should have no problem doing it yourself.

If you’re doing your own home repairs
You should always measure twice and cut once. Having a handy home repair guide like one of the one provided by www.everydayhandyman.com will provide you with tips and instructions to make sure that your home repairs are safe and of a high quality. No matter the nature of your repair, you should be able to find a link here.

Daisy gets an overhaul - photo by deepwarren on Flickr

If you’re repairing your own automobile
You should attempt serious repairs carefully. But for basic oil checks and tweaks, look to www.10w40.com for DIY auto repair manuals. Knowing how to repair your own vehicle is a great skill to have, especially if you plan on taking any kind of road trip. Car problems can come unexpectedly, so check out this resource and learn how to do-it-yourself before the need arises. You will not need to worry about trusting a mechanic when you have the knowledge to diagnose your own vehicle’s problems.

Louise Baker writes about online schools for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the top x-ray technician schools in the USA.

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How to Create a Facebook Fan Page for Your Crafty Biz – Guest Post by Glue and Glitter

by MissMalaprop on January 29, 2010

Becky from Glue and Glitter recently wrote a great post on How to Create a Facebook Fan Page for Your Crafty Business. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of questions pop up about this very topic, particularly in the forums on Etsy, so I thought I’d ask Becky to let me share her tips on how to do this with all of you. These tips work for any business that hasn’t yet set up a Facebook fan page. (And you should if you haven’t!)

Become a fan of Glue and Glitter on Facebook or join the Miss Malaprop fan page!

The post last week on approaching stores about selling your wares got a lot of love, so I thought I’d do a few more of these posts about crafty biz life.

Someone emailed over the weekend with a few questions about setting up her Facebook fan page, and it reminded me of what I went through setting up mine. No one should have to go through that! Here are a few helpful hints to save you some heartache:

Setup

The first thing I had trouble with was actually creating the page. There doesn’t seem to be a handy link anywhere to the fanpage creation area. To set up a fan page go here.

For the category, “Brand, Product, or Organization” is a good one. It keeps things nice and broad. You might want to check the box to keep the page private until you’re ready to publish. That way, you can add photos and customize things, and folks won’t stumble onto your work in progress. Once you’ve done that, you just name your page and you’re ready to roll!

(Note from Miss Malaprop: to set a custom URL for your fan page, so you don’t have all of those numbers at the end – my fan page url is http://www.facebook.com/shopMissMalaprop for example – go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to set a shorter, custom link for your page. You can change this once you have at least 25 fans.)

Customizing and Maintaining

You’ll want to upload at least one profile picture – maybe a picture of your products or a logo – so folk can quickly see what the page is about. A description box really helps with this, too. Clicking over to the Info tab and adding a blurb about your business helps, too! That blurb should also show up in a box on your page’s sidebar.

If you have an Etsy shop, there are a couple of cool ways that you can integrate that into your fan page! My favorite app for this is called RSS Graffiti. Once you install that app, you can set up any RSS feed to go to either your personal Facebook account or any fan page you’ve got set up! To get the RSS feed for your Etsy shop, head over to your shop’s main page. On the bottom of the right sidebar, there should be a link that reads “Subscribe to Shop’s Feed:”

Just copy that url, paste it into RSS Graffiti, and every time you list something in your shop it will show up on your fan page, too! This is also a handy way to feed your blog updates onto your fan page.

There’s also a super-handy My Etsy app that you might want to add. It adds a tab to your fanpage that’s basically a snapshot of your shop. You can also use the My Etsy page to feed your listings onto your fan page. If you decide to do this, learn from my mistake! Remove the rss feed of your shop from the RSS Graffiti app. Otherwise, every shop update will show up twice on your page.

While we’re on the topic of learn from my mistake, keep your fan page in mind if you’re doing a large shop update. Do folks want to see ten or 15 new items clogging up their Facebook feed? Probably not. If you’re doing a big shop update, I’d recommend removing your shop’s rss feed from RSS Graffiti, then adding it back when you have just one or two items left to add. That way, your fans can see that you’ve updated your shop, but they don’t get bombarded. You could also add it back after you’re all done, then post a status message on your page saying that you just did a big shop update.

A frustration that my friend had, which I share, is that Facebook doesn’t send fan page admins any notifications about the page’s activity. That means you have to monitor the page to see if anyone’s liked or commented on your updates there. This is a little cumbersome! What I’ve seen some folks do is “like” all of the updates on their fan page, because Facebook will send updates to users about things they “like.” Sort of a weird workaround, but at least it’s something?

Promotion

There are a few different tools that I’ve used to promote my fan page, and I’m sure there are hundreds more that I haven’t used yet.

The easiest is that handy “Suggest to Friends” that’s right underneath your profile photo:

Just pick the friends who you think would be into adding you as a fan, click send, and wait!

You can also add a link to your facebook fanpage on your website, maybe as a widget in your sidebar? Facebook makes it really easy to add a fan page badge to your sidebar.

If you use any other social media, like Twitter or Stumble Upon, you can share your facebook fan page there, too! You might also want to update your blog with a post about your new fan page.

Above that handy “Send to Friends” button is a “Promote with an Ad” link, that I have to confess I’d never clicked before. I played around with it some. Basically, it lets you set up a sidebar ad on Facebook that targets a specific audience. It gets pretty detailed, so if you’re interested I recommend playing around. It also lets you choose your rate and if you’re paying per click or CPM. If paying for ads isn’t something you have in your budget right now, this probably isn’t for you. It seemed like it bore mentioning, though!

(Update from Miss Malaprop: There’s a great thread on Etsy with tips for buying Facebook ads right now. Check it out for more info!)

So here’s where I turn to you guys, since I bet a lot of you have fan pages already. Do you have any apps you’re using, setup tips, or promotional advice to share that I missed here?

Becky Striepe is an independent crafter and freelance writer living in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two cats. She loves working with vintage fabric and salvaged materials. There’s just something about giving found objects a brand new life that really appeals to her. They lend their own stories to everything she makes. Check out her eco-friendly crafts in the Glue and Glitter Etsy shop!

You can find her writing on Glueandglitter.com, at Green Options, and at greenUPGRADER. She writes about eco-friendly crafts and sustainable living.

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How to Celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans Like a Local – Guest Post by Ashe Mischief

by MissMalaprop on January 25, 2010

The first major parade of the Mardi Gras season kicks off this coming Saturday with Krewe du Vieux in the French Quarter. A new Krewe has formed to march immediately after it, dubbed Krewe Delusion, and I’ll be marching in it along with Noisician Coalition. (Want to be part of our group for this one time only? Find out how here.)

I thought I’d repost a really great post about how locals celebrate Mardi Gras that my best bud, Miss Ashe Mischief, originally wrote about a year ago and recently reposted on her blog.

The arrival of February means the beginning of a great holiday season– and I’m not talking about New York Fashion Week! Being from the Gulf Coast, February means one thing: Mardi Gras! For many years I didn’t appreciate the holiday; once I met people who really knew how to celebrate though, it became a magical experience.

mardi gras, mask, mardi gras costumes, new orleans
Image by Lady Elixir

Whether you’re celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnivale in Venice or the Caribbean, a lot of preparation that goes in to having a memorable experience. Since there are two ways to experience New Orlean’s Mardi Gras (as a tourist and as a local), I want to share plenty of tips of experiencing it like a local!

Mardi Gras is categorized by three things: beads, drinking, and costumes. Everything else can be put in to these categories.

mardi gras, new orleans, mardi gras beads
Image by Divemasterking2000

Beads

♥ Firstly, you do NOT have to bare your breasts at Mardi Gras. This goes without saying. You’ll end up on Flickr. Flirting is just as effective for good beads, I promise.

♥ Learn the Parade Routes. There’s something intoxicating about the idea of being on Canal Street for the parades. In all honesty, it’s crowded and all the good loot is gone. Securing a spot with your friends on the more family friendly St. Charles side will lead to better beads & more fun. Just because it’s family friendly doesn’t mean that debauchery is prohibited!

♥ Pick Your Parades; don’t attend them all. There are dozens and dozens of parades leading up to Lundi Gras & Mardi Gras– so many so, you don’t actually NEED to go do during the final days. Some of my favorites include: Muses (celebrates womanhood), Tucks (a Loyola favorite!), Orpheus, Krewe d’Tat and the Sunday through Tuesday parades. (Miss Malaprop also recommends Krewe de Vieux and Barkus.)

mardi gras, new orleans mardi gras, drinking mardi gras, drinking new orleans
Image by Mugley

Drinking

♥ Avoid Bourbon Street. Again, the allure of Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras is strong; so is the increase in pick pocketing & the lovely aroma of piss, stale booze, and vomit. You know what isn’t strong? Bourbon St. drinks. They’re also overpriced. Think like a local, and head down to streets like Lower Decatur or Frenchman for your alcohol and enjoy a wholly more unique experience than your tourist counterparts.

(Note from Miss Malaprop: For Mardi Gras Day, and Mardi Gras Day only, I will respectfully disagree and note that some fun can be had, even by locals, on Bourbon Street. The key is sticking to the “local’s” end of the street, ie between St. Ann and Esplanade or so. Far away from Canal Street. You can check out gay Mardi Gras and the Bourbon Street Awards. Or head back close to midnight to see the “cop parade”, where the cops on horses precede the street cleaning crew and make everyone go home.)

♥ Make sure you are off the road by midnight the night of Fat Tuesday: the cops are in full force that night, and sweep up intoxicated folks like the trash. It’s over & done, and they will enforce that! Also: do not get arrested. You will be stuck at the Fairgrounds until the end of Mardi Gras, when they begin processing. Avoid urinating in the streets; it *will* get you arrested.

♥ Think ahead–program cab company’s numbers in to your phone.

♥ Head to the Local’s Haunts The best places, in my humble opinion, to experience Mardi Gras like a local are on lower Decatur Street and Frenchmen. The far edge of the Quarter, furthest from Canal is also fun. If you MUST do Bourbon St., try hitting the “gay” end (it begins at St. Ann & Bourbon):the Bourbon St. Pub is always a fun bar to go to.

♥ To-Go Cups and Flasks Are Your Friend. Whether in a hotel room, at a friend’s, or in your own home, stop by the grocery store and stock up on your favorite liquors. Carrying a to-go cup (which is legal so long as it’s not glass) or a flask is perfectly okay, and a much more affordable way to drink. It also saves you from having to wait in lines or around a crowded bar!

alice in wonderland, alice in wonderland costume, mardi gras costumes, mardi gras, new orleans mardi gras, flanagan's pub, french quarter

Costumes

Costumes are as fun and special during Mardi Gras as they are during Halloween. Whether a full out ensemble to just extra body glitter and hair bits, it’s always good to have something planned.

♥ Comfort & Flexibility #1 in costume planning–make sure you’re 100% comfortable in it. When traipsing from parade destination to bars and back again, you need to understand that a) you don’t have time to change, b) your clothes may get ruined. DO NOT wear something that will leave you devastated when some asshole spills his hurricane on you. Wear comfortable shoes– now is NOT the time to break in those sexy new 6″ stilettos you bought.
There are 3 easy rules for Costuming during Mardi Gras:
1. Make sure you can move in it.
2. Make sure you can drink it in.
3. Make sure you can use the restroom in it. (If your costume includes hose, cut a hole in the crotch & wear your panties over it. It makes it LOADS easier not to have to remove them.)

♥ Group Costumes Some of my favorite dress-up experiences have involved big groups of friends each dressing up as characters– whether Alice in Wonderland or Jem & the Holograms or comic book characters. Themes help you keep track of one another, too!

♥ Corsets & Lingerie For men and women, you can’t go wrong with the hint of innuendo by wearing a corset or lingerie pieces (like garters and stockings) with your outfit! Go to my favorite local haunt, Trashy Diva for to die for pieces.

♥ Concealment When costuming, making a concealed pocket or rigging a place to carry a clutch or purse is a great idea (for both men AND women). You want to be sure to carry your I.D., a cell phone, extra cash and/or a credit card. Carrying around a cumbersome and clunky bag isn’t an option– it gets in the way at bars, you have to find a place to store it, and it makes you a prime target for pickpockets.
When all else fails:
1. A belt buckle is an easy and safe way to store a small ring of keys;
2. Your bra can be an excellent place to store cash, credit cards, IDs, and even small cell phones if you’re busty);
3. Create a small pouch to hold your necessities in, and attach it to the inside of your skirt, pants, shirt, garter belt, or other places.

♥ Don’t Wear Sandals or Flip Flops You’re probably thinking, why not? They’re comfortable, cute, and usually flat. But they also expose your feet to: spilled drinks, broken glass, urine, vomit, bar sludge, and more. Do you really want to stumble home in the wee A.M. hours, only to have to wash that off? Do yourself a favor, and wear something that covers your whole foot.

When it comes to costumes, above all, the sky is REALLY the limit! I’ve seen people in elaborate costumes, to people wearing their street clothes, to dressing in drag.

For those who have experienced Mardi Gras, and perhaps not in the traditional sense, what have been your experiences? Your thoughts and reactions?