Exciting Times!

Kyle and I finally have our honeymoon booked! We have been married for over a year now (and it flew by FAST). We have finally decided to take the plunge (Read: Spend the Money) and book our vacation to Las Vegas! We have always wanted to go to some place thats a FUN vacation. I have never taken such a far trip for vacation purposes only. Normally when we fly, we go visit family. Kyle is super excited as he has never been to Vegas before.

I had a one week stint there for a job install in my previous career. I didnt get to do much but stare at the pretty lights and see a Cirque show while there. Since that time I have promised Kyle we will go back someday. This coming August, has that day. We got a stellar deal through Expedia.com (which I have never used before) due to it being one of the off seasons for the tourists. We will be staying in the Venetian as well.

We are now looking in to fun but fairly affordable things to do while there. 5 nights can get us in to a lot of stuff to do. I know we want to see the Cirque Du Soliel shows of "KA" and "O" but aside from that, do you recommend anything? Places to eat? Things to see? We are not renting a car so anything we do off the strip will have to be with a shuttle/cab/tour bus.

Very exciting!

Now to hunker back down and keep working on goodies to stock up for the 3rd and 4th quarter of the year!

:)

Movies and New things

Mr. Red Marionette, some friends and I went to see Kick Ass this weekend. I have to say I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. If you have some extra time and some extra money, go see it. I am a huge movie buff but pretty selective in what I really endorse.

I am a HUGE action adventure fan. I dont care for sappy movies that will make me cry....seriously.

I am super excited about The Expendables coming out soon. I have my hopes up, ill admit. It has every big hitter in the action adventure genre except a couple of guys from the 80's. We have Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews, Steve "Stone Cold" Austin, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo.... the list goes on. Seriously....Cant wait.

I have created some new goodies to be listing in the shop this week. Bess (in photo) is now listed in the shop for today. You can see her Bio HERE

I also will be listing Phillip the Penguin as wall art and two baby owls (Shirley and Clara) on a new fabric as wall art. I also will be bringing back a custom order from last year Patrick the Chipmunk. He will be available for purchase by the end of the week! Keep checking back!

Motivation is slowly brewing...

For a while now I have been struggling for more than a 15 second attention span on anything regarding Red Marionette.

My mother being here seemed to help me focus for a bit longer to finish up two wreaths (which I posted over the weekend and now have listed in the Shop) that in turn seemed to have snapped something in my head. I was having the doldrums, listless and unfocused until she seemed to pull me out of it. We crafted A LOT this weekend. I feel it brewing inside of me. I have a lot of little doodads I want to make this year to make the fourth quarter of the year a little less hectic. I want to be prepared for this year. I want to have so much stockpile that every time I walk by it I know I could give one item to everyone in a small country and still have plenty for a busy season. That is my goal. Seriously.

I think Mom being here really pulled me out of that fog. I looked at my sales over the weekend and realized I am three sales away from 600.... Wait wait. Wasnt I just at 200 sales not to long ago...? At least thats how it felt! I was so shocked that it made me feel like a decent Etsy Seller finally! For some reason that number makes me feel like I can say I have done pretty darn good on Etsy! (Thanks to all of you!)

So all of these things coming together finally kicked some motivational juices in to gear! I am currently working on sewing a big batch of Phillip the Penguin right now. And I plan to keep chug chugging along!

Since I discovered the Featured Seller article on the bottom half of Etsy.com I have wanted to be a featured seller! They have such a cute little layout and feature style that it has been a coveted position among many Etsy sellers for a long while. I admit I am one of them. I would be giddy to have that position offered to me.

However, I have read some follow up articles on blogs of people who have been asked to be Featured Sellers and they say it isnt all sunshine and daisys. You can get a serious backlog of sales if you arent prepared and happen to have a day job (like Moi) and also happen to do very well as a featured seller. So it is good and bad. The exposure would be awesome, but you may end up being so busy for the next month your life gets put on hold to fill orders. Its terrifying and so appealing all at the same time to me! Now, I have no idea how they select people for the Featured Seller spot. I wish I did as I would like a little birdie to tell them I am up for it this year! I shall make that my goal. Not necessarily to be a featured seller cause if it isnt in the cards, it just isnt in the cards. But my goal is to have enough product by the Holiday season (Sept - Dec) that if it by chance happened, then I would be prepared to handle it!

A girl can dream, right?

Productive time with Mom

My mother arrived Thursday night and we hit the ground running Friday Morning! My mother is a crafter as well and so we have been crafting up a storm! I finished these two wreaths late last night. They have been talked up to all of my friends and family as I said I wouldnt finish them until Mom was here. Well Ta da!
The confetti family wreath was inspired by the yarn I found that looked like Funfetti icing! Do you know the stuff? Its a white base of icing with multi colored sprinkles throughout the icing and the batter! Love it!
It took more time than I have ever put in to a wreath just due to all of the accents being hand sewn. I LOVE this one as it is just a riot of color! I can see this in a little girls room or a present for a new family of three!



Andy and the Forest Floor has been in my head for months now. I love how this one came out so delicate and yet so earthy. I normally dont use natural elements (twigs/ pebbles) because I know they are more fragile than the artificial stuff I purchase, but this wouldnt be the same without the twigs.

I think I have found my new personal favorite.
I hand sculpted and painted and varnished the little mushrooms on the wreath. They have a lot of love in to those little shroomies.
I have always been fascinated by moss and lichen so I was so happy to include all of these elements together in this wreath.

They are both available in my store as of today!
Red Marionette

Wish Me Luck!!

WHOO HOOO!
Its that time of the year again when Atomic Holiday Bazaar is accepting applications for their annual show!
I have participated for two years now and it is a great show to go to and vend your goodies! Its not your Grandmas crafts! Edgy, Artistic, Hip and creative. Check out Adriens site by clicking on the link above.
Wish me luck that I am accepted!

I have my booth layout from last year shown.

Bumped up the Bug Schedule - I know, we are weird!

This is my Fair Warning: If you are easily grossed out - don't read this post.

I understand that eating bugs of my own accord is a highly debatable subject. Mr. Red Marionette and I have had a lot of feedback from people regarding this. You either get why we are doing this, or you don't (emphatically don't, apparently. Hehe!)....

If you read my previous post you would know my mother is visiting this weekend.

I would never push someone to try something they have no desire to. She informed me she was highly grossed out by this and that's okay. (She used more exclamation points in her email than I have ever seen her use.)

So without further suspense, Kyle and I tried the bugs last night. Yep, went ahead and finished it up before she got here. It was also discussed at Kyles Firefighter class that some of his classmates were interested in trying, so it is a good thing we got a couple of packages.

This is the box they came in. All kinds of lovely foreign post marks on it. From Thailand. I blacked out my info. Yeah, I'm paranoid like that. :)

It didn't take very long for them to arrive, about 10 business days.

Here are the sealed packages. Kyle said he was expecting baggies with hand written labels. Erm. Like black market bugs? Sure. No, they were packaged professionally with the little moisture absorbers and nutritional information. If you are curious it was zeros across the board. Apparently they have to put the nutritional info on there but they didn't take the time to test how much fat a cricket actually has. If you could see the look on my face right now...

So I had ordered two packages of Mixed Bugs, Two packages of Big Crickets and one Package of Bamboo worms.

We decided the mixed bugs would allow us to try a little of each kind. It included Mole Crickets, Dung Beetles, Big Crickets and Silk Worms Larvae and Bamboo Worms.

Tiny little dried buggies!

The dung beetles were about half the size of my pinky nail. Not nearly as intimidating as I thought it was going to be. When someone says Big Cricket, I think of something the size of a clothespin!

The Big Cricket you can see in my hand in the following photo without wings or legs, really isn't all that big. (You remove the legs and wings to eat because the legs have little spineys that make it hard to eat and the wings don't chew easily. I did my research online)

They had little to no distinguishing scent. Being all in the same little bag they all kinda tasted the same as well. Just different textures.

The only bug out of the bag I didn't try was a mole cricket. There was only one and it was in two pieces. They call it a mole cricket cause it has shovel like legs on the front. I was a little grossed out by that. Yeah, I made the mistake of googling photos of it. Erm...

For all of the bugs I can say they tasted herbally or grassy. If you have ever chewed on a piece of straw like an old farmer, then that is the taste. Nearly the same consistency as well. Very dry. We needed a glass of water to wash them down as little pieces get stuck easily on the back of the tongue and in the teeth. I can say the one different consistency was the bamboo worm which was like eating white Styrofoam. Spongier than the others but still very dry.

The adventure was worth it as far as I was concerned. I wasn't as brave as I thought I would be but since Kyle was eating them right alongside me I couldn't let him one-up me! We also didn't get photos of our faces when eating just because both of us were eating at the same time. :)

If you are curious about eating bugs, id say go for it! If you don't like it then you can knowingly say you have tried them and don't like it.

There you go, Mom. All done! They wont be in the house when you arrive. hehe!

Bugs and Mom

Mr. Red Marionette and I like to watch shows like Bizarre Foods. Yes, I am fascinated what other cultures will eat whether out of necessity or sheer style. We recently decided that we both would like to try eating bugs. Bugs like other cultures eat - Crickets, worms and the like.

If you are still with me and haven't turned green yet I will keep going with the story.

I had no luck finding a restaurant that would have bugs on the menu that was not in California. Although a tempting adventure to fly across the United States for Bugs, it was not feasible. We are located in Orlando, FL and I think my family would commit me if we made plans for that trip. Onward and upward, the next step in my mind would be to find a bug distributor for cooking our own food with them. I found many places that had bug recipes and very few places that sold bugs. I finally found www.thailandunique.com that had "snack" versions of bugs. Pre processed and packaged ready for snacking or cooking in meals was perfect for what I was looking for.

I had a hard time deciding on what delectable we wanted to try for our culinary adventure. I finally settled on a bag of Mixed Bugs, Giant Edible Crickets, and Bamboo Worms (Which look like meal worms to me) So, order placed and on their way from Thailand to me!

Notice how I am still excited about this adventure. This bird may be singing a completely different tune when I actually have one of these little critters in my hand. I have some backups in mind though as far as recipes I have found on some websites. I am adventurous (read: stupid) enough to try them without any additional flavorings at first. I want to know what they taste like without other flavors combined. I say this now, and I am sure you all will find out soon how this actually goes.

In case you would like to try some recipes this site HERE has a couple I could handle. I also saw one where you make Rice Krispie treats only chop up some of the dried buggies really tiny and sprinkle them in. I think marshmallow sugary goodness would overpower a lot of tastes.

So...

I received my package of bugs right before I had to come in to work today. That means that sometime this week I will have a story to share....and photos. I shall take lots of photos.

The extent of my food adventures when I was young was trying calamari, duck, and occasionally forced liver and onions by my family members that never failed to get it at Furrs Cafeteria. I tried fried Chicken Livers for the first time in 2009 courtesy of my best friend Amy. So there are still staples in peoples lives I havent gotten to. I do enjoy many kinds of foods and since I have had access to more styles/types of food since living in Florida I have been able to try new things. Although the jump from Chicken Livers to Bugs seems a bit extreme, and it is, that just happens to be my current focus. Maybe some day someone will be able to get me to eat Blood Sausage or Tripe. But for now, BUGS!

The timing is impeccable as my Mother is coming for a long weekend from Kansas to stay with us and visit. Oh ho ho!

I don't know how she will handle the bug culinary adventures as this blog post will probably be the first thing she hears about it. ( Sorry Mom!)

My mother and I have a lot of crafting time planned while she is here. I have wreaths to make and she has personal projects she wants to get to work on as well. I hope to have finished this summer wreath and confetti sprinkles wreath I have been putting off "until mom gets here". So hopefully new products in the shop next week as well!

Sally has been Featured!

Its Monster Friday at On Cupcake Moon!
Sally the Monster has been featured!

http://oncupcakemoon.blogspot.com

Thank you so much for the honor!

Happy Friday!

Happy Easter and Our One year Anniversary

Happy Easter a bit late to all of you!

Yesterday also happened to be the one year Anniversary of Mr. Red Marionette and I. We celebrated by staying in and spending time together since that is a rare event nowadays.

This is my favorite photo of us that was taken earlier on in our relationship. I still love how we have our own little world and this photo shows it.

:)