I have some big news today (actually two big items of news.) First, I would like to introduce the new Oh Happy Day Party Store! It is a full scale online party shop with modern and fun party goods.  Party supplies have been something I’ve been passionate about for as long as I can remember. I love going into a big store with lots of cliché party supplies and then curating only the best stuff. When I travel abroad the first place I go is a party shop. I fill my suitcase with interesting and hard-to-get items from around the world and then lug it home on the plane to add to my stash. Now I’ll be doing it on a larger scale and making this stuff available for everyone.

The shop is organized by category or you can search by color (my favorite) under the “view all” tab. We took a lot of care in the design and taking the product photos and making everything just so. In addition to our current products we have lots of new shipments and products coming in every week to make our selection even better.

I want to thank Alison Piepmeyer, Sam Livermore and Paul Ferney for working tirelessly on this project with me in the trenches nights and weekends until it was complete. Also I want to thank Alix Sorrel for all her help with the photo shoot and front page design. I have such a good team and I’m so proud of everyone. Finally I want to thank Lauren O’Neill for the beautiful design and Rusty Meadows for the brilliant programming. They have high standards and made the store way better than I could have even hoped.

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The Party Shop isn’t the only new thing around here. It’s Oh Happy Day’s birthday! Nine years ago I started a little blog called Oh Happy Day! It’s crazy how much we’ve grown. To commemorate we gave the ol’ girl a much needed makeover. (Like Botox for the blog!) We made changes I’ve been wanting to make for years. For the new posts we kept the format similar to a standard blog but for the older posts we made them more like a website so it would be easier to browse than clicking through a million old archived pages. One of the biggest problems with our old design is it was hard to get to all of our old DIY projects. Now it’s easy to find our best content through the navigation at the top (there are even photos!)

Another functionality that was really important to me was connecting the shop and the blog. One of the most frequent questions we get is “Where can I find that [insert hard-to-find supply].” Now on some posts (the ones that apply) there will be a “SHOP SUPPLIES” button at the bottom of the post. This functionality of course will get better as our product selection gets more robust.

I really want to thank Paul Ferney for taking a couple months off of his own work to design the blog. There is no way I could have gotten the functionality that I wanted just right without standing over his shoulder while he designed. I also want to thank Alison Piepmeyer my managing Editor for the last two years for managing this whole site redesign from start to finish. A big thanks to Abby Bridges for the hours of tedious categorizing work! There were lots of other people that gave input and contractors that came in and advised and tested out the site. THANK YOU! And last a big thanks to Shiv Asthana for carefully coding all our clumsy old content into a sleek and beautiful fast site.

Come on in and make yourself at home!

Shop photos by Paul Ferney for Oh Happy Day

Nautical Flags photo by Sarah Hebenstreit for Oh Happy Day