Finally, Halloween night has arrived. The kids are all excited to put on their costumes, and go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. So you get them dressed in their costumes. Maybe you put on some face makeup, and style their hair. In the middle of all this, your doorbell is already ringing with the early trick-or-treaters getting their start. So you're dashing back and forth, getting your kids ready and also handing out candy. But wait. You need to get some cute photos of your own trick-or-treators, before they head out the door.

Yes, I used to rush through the entire photo taking process on Halloween night. By the time we were ready, is was already dark out. And I had to resort to taking so-so photos, inside the house. They were never great, and usually had the "flashy" look, from having to use a flash indoors.

Now, I take my photos during the daylight hours. We get the kids ready early, and head outside for some photos in front of the house. I usually get these about 30 minutes before sun down. The lighting is perfect, and you get a little glow from the setting sun. You could even take some photos a day or two before Halloween. Do a test run with the costumes, makeup, and hair. And take your photos at the same time. I find that I get much better photos by planning ahead a little. Photos that really show off their costumes, and are bright and colorful. And the best part? No rushing around and stressing on Halloween night, when all the kids want to do, is get out the door to start collecting candy!

We've all been there. We finish working on a layout, and have all these scrap pieces laying around after we're done. Maybe it's just some pattern paper and cardstock pieces. Maybe you have some alphas or chipboard pieces out. Maybe some coordinating ribbon and buttons. But before you decide to put all those pieces away and back into your stash, look at them one more time. They all match, right? After all, those pieces did end up on a layout, so they must have looked pretty good together. They may just be tiny scraps, but I bet you could take a few minutes and turn them into something cute.

One of my favorite things to do with my scraps, is to make a few cards with them. For every layout that I used to make, you could probably find one to two cards to match it. Sometimes, I even take the basic design of my layout, and just translate it to the smaller scale of a card. When I was working on the altered frames for my recent tutorial, I had some scraps of pattern paper left over from the frames. They weren't big enough pieces to stick back into my stash. So rather than just throw them away, I made a few cards. I got four 4x4 inch cards done, just with those scraps. I stayed with the flower theme I had in my frame projects, but just choose random flower embellishments I had laying around. I kept the embroidery floss idea from the frames, and wrapped some around the centers of my cards. These four cards only took me about 20 minutes total to make. And it felt good to use products that I already had out, so that there was less thinking involved and just some quick creating.