Top O the Mornin' to Ya!

It's almost St. Patrick's Day and we thought we would share a quick and easy craft that you could give as a gift or make for a St Pats Day party for people to snack on. This one is pretty simple and could be easy and fun to do with kids too.

Gold at the End of the Rainbow Jar

What you'll need:
Rainbow Skittles (includes red, yellow, green, purple, orange)
Easter Skittles (if you are an over achiever and want to add more colors)
Gold Coin Chocolates
Mason Jar
Green Decorations (option, think green ribbon, fabric, or a hat like below)

Step 1-Sort the skittles...It took me about 5 min while watching TV.

Step 2. Start layering. Starting with the gold coins, then purple, then the blues if you got them, then green, yellow, orange, and red.

Step 3. Decorate. I added a little hat to mine to keep it simple, but you could add ribbon, fabric, stickers, beads or whatever else you can find in your craft drawer.

P.S. I'm kind of a perfectionist and it really bugs me that I didn't have blue-but it was too cold and I was too lazy to walk to the store (two blocks away) to get the Easter Skittles. I may have to go get them and re layer them! :)

National Craft Month

March is National Craft Month and the Craft and Hobby Association and Cre8time want you to devote more time to creative expression doing the things you love! For the month of March, use the #Cre8time hastag on your Facebook and Instagram posts, as well as your tweets and pins. AND you can enter to win $500 when you submit a photo of how you are celebrating National Craft Month to Cre8time's Facebook page.

Whether you decide to learn a new craft, or dust off your scrapbooking paper, what will you Cre8time for?

Need some inspiration? Here are some of my favorite sites:

Pinterest (Duh!)-The most obvious and possibly most popular source of DIY inspiration with tutorials. If your interested in what inspired us here at Pig and Peacock, you can follow us @pigandpeacock

Craftgawker-Before there was Pinterest, I could spend hours on this site (as well as it's sister site FoodGawker). Most of what you will find here is super beautiful, it's awesome for inspiration, but iffy on the tutorials.

Etsy-Need some fresh ideas in your medium of choice-look no further than what others are producing on Etsy. You won't find tutorials here, but with hundreds of thousands of sellers, you are bound to get some fresh ideas and inspiration.

Craftsy-Want some more in depth learning? Head over to Craftsy and you can enroll in online classes that will give you more than just a 4 picture how to.

Martha Stewart-Lets face it, because she is the queen of DIY and crafts.

Calling All Crafters!

Let's get ready to SHOP + PARTY + ART + CRAFT:

    * The best shopping experience featuring handmade art & craft from Dallas and beyond
    * Free DIY crafts to make and take
    * Bars and restaurants on-site
    * Party tunes
    * Photo Booth benefiting a local charity
    * Free admission, wheelchair/stroller accessible, plenty of free and secure parking
    * Free collectible Bash Bags™ for the first 50 adult shoppers in line at 11 am, chock full of handmade goods from artists and sponsors:
                  
A crowd favorite, the Etsy Dallas Spring Bash will offer up the popular and highly coveted Bash Bags™ for the first 50 adult shoppers in line when we open to the public at 11 a.m. These reusable tote bags – chock full of handmade products – have become a thing of legend, and shoppers have been known to arrive three hours early to stand in line for one!

Applications for the 2014 Etsy Dallas Spring Bash are open! Visit the Handmade Bash website to learn more and apply! Don't forget to mark your calendars for April 26th and we'll see you at the Shops at Park Lane!

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Celebrate Fat Tuesday with Etsy Dallas Team member Silla ofwww.sillasoup.com on The Broadcast today!

National Wear Red Day

Heart disease is the #1 killer of women in America, causing one of every three deaths- that's more lives than all types of cancer combined! In fact, more women than men have died from heart disease in the past 30 years.

Often as women, we worry about cardiovascular disease in our fathers and husbands and urge them to be more heart healthy, but we forget that heart disease is not gender specific and that it is important for us to be heart healthy too! Today is National Wear Red Day to help raise awareness with women to take steps in their lives! Choose to speak up and fight the statistics by supporting the American Heart Associations's Go Red for Women Movement. Visit the Go Red for Women Campaign's website for tips on how you can help yourself and others prevent heart disease.

We at Pig and Peacock support the Go Red's campaign and strive to live heart healthy lives-we hope in 2014 you will too! We created the Go Red Awareness Ribbon soap as a way to help raise awareness of this often silent killer and donate 50% of it's sales to Go Red for Women.

Taking steps to improve your heart health can be simple and easy.

• Get moving-as little as 20 min of walking a day can help, and 40 min a day is even better
• Reduce stress-did you know as little as 20 min of walking a day can help reduce your stress levels too? :)
• Eat healthy-replace one snack a day with a piece of fruit
• Quit smoking-ok, ok, so this one isn't simple or easy necessarily, but it will significantly reduce your risk for heart disease!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Years Everyone!



Whew! After a hectic holiday season here we are in a new year. Time to start fresh, with new ideas and resolutions to change old habits. Every year my sister and I have big plans to start off the year for Pig and Peacock, and we typically get one of those plans accomplished in the year. One. It's sad. BUT we have learned over the last year that sometimes our plans are a wee bit ambitious and maybe we should scale it back some. Not that we don't want to dream big, but you have to know and understand what is doable and achievable. Organize our storage closet-doable. Keep our soap/crafting table clear of stuff at the end of the day-not happening!

This year on the list for us is:

• Expand our candle line and add more seasonal fragrances
• Grow our Up-cycle candle collection (we will also happily "empty" the bottles to achieve this)
• Grow our lib balm line
• Attempt bath bombs again-we gave up after continually making "hamburger" shaped ones
• And, alas, try to keep that damn craft table clean!

What are your resolutions for 2014?

Made in Far North Dallas-K8Made

Congrats to another Etsy Dallas member, Kate of K8Made! Check out her Far North Dallas Advocate article here!

We love her adorable purses and clutches :)