Working On Niches: Backyard Weddings and Homemade Costumes

Phew, I've been busy lately! No, I didn't have a wedding; but my sister did, and I was there to plan, assist, and document every step of the way. Which is a good thing, because I was working so hard that I didn't even have a chance to think, and I can't even remember parts of it due to all the stress!

I learned so much during the process of planning and executing this backyard wedding that I just had to share. For example, I never knew there was quite so much involved in making nice-looking table settings, or that decorating wedding cupcakes isn't quite as easy as it looks. We tried some things that were decidedly non-traditional, such as growing our own wedding flowers; we were also happy to give some non-traditional things like having your dog at the wedding a miss. Finally, working out the wedding budget was a big part of making sure that we kept things affordable.

You can find a complete list of all my thoughts, hints, tips and suggestions here: How to Plan a Backyard Wedding.

Creating all of these mini-sites on Squidoo has meant that I've moved firmly into the backyard wedding niche. I'm excited to explore this are in the future, and see what else I can contribute.

As for an older niche - homemade costumes - working on the wedding stuff has meant less time for that. However, I'm really happy to add How To Make a Punk Costume and Nerd Halloween Costume Ideas to my existing list (which already includes such wildly popular items as How To Make a Viking Costume and Homemade Rockstar Costume Ideas).

I'll get more into building niches and working as an online entrepreneur (which has a lot of overlap with freelance writing) in a future post. For now, hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Article Rundown: Combat, Camping, and Nerds

I've been pretty good about updating my list of published articles over on my humor blog, You Amuse Me, but I thought I'd do an update here as well for anyone who is interested.

First of all, I'm pleased to be writing for a new humor market called The Smoking Jacket. It's a subsidiary of The Playboy Network (gasp!) but it's been described as "surprisingly safe for work." I've recently published A Guide to Leveraging Your Nerd Cred into Dates there, in which I talk about how you don't have to be a generic "stud" to woo members of your preferred sex. I've also created a handy list of Five Occasions When Going to Hooters is a Bad Choice. Hint: you might want to consider ix-naying the popular chain during first dates and family vacations.

My writing for Trail's Edge Blog is still going strong. Check out this list of Things To Watch Out For When Beach Camping if you're going to be enjoying the beach overnight for the first time. And although the last thing I'd want to do would be to scare people off of camping, I still think you should read about 5 Makeshift Weapons For Defending Your Camp in case of emergency.

To round out the list, here's an article from my old standby site, Weird Worm. If you think that all action movies are the same, then you obviously haven't watched the movies that contain these 8 Ridiculous Close Combat Fight Scenes.

Hope you enjoy!