Angelica, Meghan and I are all challenging ourselves to blog every day during the month of May.  We are hoping you can join in too!

Today’s prompt: Introduce Yourself.

So….Hi!  My name is Katy McKinley!

I live in Wheeling, West Virginia with my charming husband, Bennett, and my even more charming son, Louis.  We have two pups, one car and a live in a giant, old house that never seems to be clean.  Ever.  Bennett and I are both small business owners in the creative market.  He is the talent behind Bennett McKinley Photography (and the Meet Me in the Alley project that has been sweeping our city and state!) and I am the solo employee / marketer / designer / email answerer / creator / crazy person at Handmade Escapade.

I pretend to be a natural redhead because I feel like it’s the hair color I was always meant to have.

Although I grew up in Northern Michigan (Hersey, what what!), I feel that West Virginia fits me the best.  I love the culture here.  Even when sometimes it can be a bit more conservative than we would like.  People from West Virginia LOOOOOVE West Virginia.  I’ve never experienced such an empowerment behind a place of residence before.  It’s awesome to be a part of.

In total, I have one sister, one brother, one half-brother and three step-brothers.  I am a proud auntie to six kiddos (one more on the way!!)…and I am desperate to become the “Crazy Aunt Katy” that they truly deserve.  I’ll have to put more work into it.

Purple is, hands down, the best color ever in the entire world.  I’ll fight you if you say anything different.

We are self-proclaimed beer snobs.  West Virginia has ::interesting:: alcohol laws that makes it hard to get a lot of different craft brews brought across state lines.  So we’ve been known to drive to Ohio and Pennsylvania a lot to hit up different beer distributors, just so we can drink the good stuff.  The only time you’ll find a bottle by one of the big dogs (Miller / Budweiser / Coors / etc) is if someone left it behind.  And it will stay there until they return to drink it on a later date.  Your watery lagers are safe in our house, that’s for sure!

I don’t like to use the term “crafter” when I talk about what I do.  Because it automatically puts an image in my head where I’m sitting around all day, doing paper crafts.  Nothing against paper crafters, it’s just not my main focus.  I like to call myself a “MAKER”.  Because that’s what I do.  Make things.  I never sit still.  My soul is literally fed by creating anything and everything I can get my hands on.  And it’s extra awesome because Bennett is a big supporter of my making…as well as someone who enjoys to create things on his own as well.  We have a million projects going on in our house at all times.

We are a part of a revitalization effort in our city…which is our main focus outside of our own home.  Bennett is on the board for a couple of groups (ReInvent Wheeling and Wheeling Young Preservationists) and we attend pretty much any and every event that happens in the Friendly City.  We take great pride in all that Wheeling has to offer…as well as all that we can offer Wheeling.

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That’s a bit of me in a nutshell.  Now tell me about yourself (and don’t forget to linkup below)!