December 29, 2008

The website is down

Not sure why, but I haven't been able to connect to or view my website all day. I've gotten two orders through it, so I know it must be working intermittently.

I was meeting all day with my accountant, and now it's too late to contact my hosting service provider. I'm going to cross my fingers that they get it up overnight, or I'll be talking on the phone to them all day tomorrow.

Hopefully that phone call goes better than this one.

You can continue to shop from my Etsy shop in the meantime: http://breadandbadger.etsy.com

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December 26, 2008

Urban Outfitters Update


I got the second batch of sample glasses from Urban Outfitters last weekend, and I'm so excited about them! We've decided to go with hi-ball glasses instead of pints, to keep them separate from the cheaper "novelty" pint glasses they have in stock.

They even have my logo and web address on the bottoms, which you can see when you take a drink! I'm wondering now if the decal would look better in white, instead of black, but I love them either way.

These will hopefully go into production right away, and make it onto Urban Outfitters' shelves in early spring. Exciting!

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December 23, 2008

Pumpkin Flower


Finally got to bake this weekend! Also finally got to use the cool silicone baking dish my mom got me for my birthday (back in June)!

This pumpkin flower cooked a little strangely, since it was a double recipe of pumpkin bread (with 3/4 of the oil substituted with unsweetened apple sauce), and it took way to look to get the center to set. It's a little chewy on the edges, and it cracked down the center when I removed it from the pan. It's supposed to be prettier from the underside, but this is the way it worked.

I'm just happy that we have time to cook this week, since we were eating a lot of take-out and frozen dinners last week.

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December 22, 2008

Holiday Goodness

I had a few spare moments this week between making glasses and packing them, and I finally got to put up our Christmas tree! This tree belonged to my Nana and Papa, and I'm thrilled to have it now.

One of my favorite things about this tree is that it comes apart in three sections. Whenever I live in an apartment without enough room for the full tree, I just put together to top two sections and sit it on a side table!

I do really miss the smell of a live tree, which we always had at home when I was growing up. I have a really nice candle that smells like pine, which I burn every night that the tree is up. I also made cinnamon ornaments a year or two ago, which I have on the tree and in a dish next to the candle. It's great!

This is our first holiday with our own cat, and Rupert is having a blast! I was worried he'd try to eat the fake tree, since he loves to gnaw on all things plastic. So far, he's been really good, and only attacked the ornaments once. You can see more great pics of Rupert, the tree, and our other busy stuff on our Flickr site.

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December 21, 2008

Snow Days

So, my car is an ice cube. It's covered in ice, and I don't think I'll be getting into it any time soon. Not that its little tires could drive on this hard-packed snow-topped-with-ice anyway, but I'm just saying.

This means that we can't get to the post office to mail the international packages that are waiting to go out, and it means we can't get to the studio to make anything. We're also out of newspaper again (even after I bought lots of unused newsprint), so we're running out of ways to pack boxes up. What a nightmare!

The good news is that things have slowed down just enough that we were able to finally clean our house, buy groceries (before the ice happened) and put up our Christmas tree! We're getting a little breathing time, which was very long overdue. I think Sean and I were each putting in about 80 hours a week, and we hadn't had a day off since the beginning of November.

I feel bad that so many people are looking for expedited shipping right now to get things by Christmas, but we're just not able to offer it. I have to break this bad news multiple times a day, and I'm starting to feel anxiety about checking my email! Hopefully, our car will thaw out, we'll get more glasses made, and things will become a little more normal after the 25th.

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December 18, 2008

I can haz vakashun?


Today is the first official "day off" Sean and I have taken since the first of November! Yay! It's been completely insane around our place, with work taking over our lives so much that we hadn't been grocery shopping in about 3 weeks, and our living room furniture has been rearranged to accommodate our "shipping center".

I've still been answering emails throughout the day, which I could also use a break from, but it's unavoidable. We're finally caught up on shipping, so orders are going out pretty much the day after their paid for. We just ran out of a few pint glass designs, so we'll be back to work tomorrow making more. But at least we had a few hours of video game playing (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), fish tank maintenance, and essential errand running, to unwind a little.

I'd like to thank everyone who braved the icy roads to come out for Crafty Wonderland last weekend! It raised my spirits to see people eagerly waiting in line to shop. It wasn't a record-breaking sales day, but it was great to be there and sell some stuff. I finally got some of my own shopping done too, and it was nice to see so many of my crafty friends!

Crafty Wonderland was our last event of the year, so if you're looking to get some last-minute holiday shopping done, head on over to the Winter Solstice Arts & Crafts Market at PSU! (Check out the details below.) We're going to be doing a lot of wholesaling next year (hopefully!), so we may cut back on events a little. This little business here has grown so quickly in the past few months, I don't even know what to expect on a daily basis. There may be tons of new products in the spring, or we may pare down the line to make it more manageable. Who really knows what the future will bring? I'm just so thankful that we've been so successful this year, and that we have the best customers on earth!!

2nd Annual Winter Solstice Arts and Craft sale at PSU
Saturday, December 20, 2008 -- 8am-3pm
Portland State University~3rd Fl. Smith Center
1825 SW Broadway

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December 13, 2008

Crafty Wonderland's Super Colossal Holiday Sale


It's tomorrow! Come see us in person even though we are not much to look at right now and will have bags under our eyes! Buy some stuff from us and the other vendors so that packing up at the end of the day will be faster and easier!

We can't ship any more stuff and guarantee it by Christmas, so if you're in the Portland area, this is your last chance to get that set of pint glasses you've been hemming and hawing about for your uncle! We may sell out, so get there early!

Spent all your hard-earned cash already? No problem! We take all major credit and debit cards! There will be 180 vendors with totally worthwhile stuff to buy, so please support your local artisans!

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December 11, 2008

Trunk Show at my House?

Sean and I spent the entire day writing up orders (I hadn't had time to check my email in two days) and packing up what we could. I brought 40 packages to the post office an hour ago, and we have about 40 more to pack up still. Plus the orders we've gotten during the day that I haven't had time to look at. But we're finally catching up!!

I've never heard of Uncrate, but apparently, a lot of other folks have. I was featured in their gift guide yesterday, and it brought about 1000 more people to my website than usual! Orders have been insane, and we're just praying that we can get everything out in time for Christmas.

Tomorrow is my last day for ordering by Christmas, so after that we'll just be makin' and shippin' what we can. Orders after tomorrow may not get shipped out until after Christmas, which I know will be a bummer for some people.

I'm thinking of hosting a trunk show for friends of mine in PDX to stop by my house to shop, have a snack and relax. This would happen on the 19th or later, so we'll have time to make stuff after our last craft fair of the year (Crafty Wonderland!). If you'd be intersted in coming to something like that, let me know in the comments or through email, so I can organize it! I talked to Michelle today, and she thought maybe it would be cool to do a multi-artisan trunk show, right before the holiday, so we locals can get some last-minute shopping done. Anyone interested?

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December 10, 2008

Busy Busy

In case you're wondering how busy things really are at Chez Badger, I'll try to paint you a picture. I should first point out that over the weekend, we sold 96 pint glasses (plus a lot of other stuff) at Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle. Normally, I don't even bring more than 24 glasses to an event, and they never sell out. I can confidently say that we could have sold more if we'd brought them to UCU, but our tiny car just didn't have any more room.

Today, Sean and I sandblasted over 200 items--mostly pint glasses, but also spice jars, soap pumps and small tumblers. It took us two days to mask them all, and we weren't able to ship anything out today because we were so busy.

You want to know the real kicker though? Almost everything we made today has been pre-sold online. And that doesn't even count the 40 or so orders I received today and haven't even had time to look at.

So, we're a little bit busy, you could say. ;)

Tomorrow is a ship-only day, where we'll pack up everything we can and take as many trips to the post office as we need to. Everything ordered before the 12th will get to its destination by Christmas, though our shipping schedule is a little out of whack from where I'd like it. And we'll be bustin' ass to make sure we have at least another 96 pint glasses for Crafty Wonderland this Sunday. At least our 13 hr. work days will pay off when we can pay all our bills next month! :D

On a totally random note, I somehow managed to stop by Queen Bee Creation's studio/shop today to work out a trade. I ended up with a fantastic new purse, in the design shown above, only I think the colors are reversed. It's a big "trucker" satchel, which I will love and cherish for always. Or until I get another of her bags, since deciding between them was so hard!!

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Urban Craft Uprising = Total Success!


Yowza! It's been crazy crazy crazy over here in Badgerland the past two weeks, and it doesn't look like it's letting up any time soon!

Last weekend, we vended at Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle for two days. It was the most successful craft fair we've ever done! We sold out of half our pint glass designs the first day, and completely sold out of them by the end of the event. We ran out of old fashioned glasses, and almost all our soap pumps and oil bottles. Our car was much lighter and easier to pack for the ride home, but I wish there had been room in it to bring more stuff!

We had a lovely stay at the Moore Hotel, and had great food at Pike Place Market. We've only ever been in Seattle once before, about 10 years ago, and we were only passing through. It was nice to see the city a little bit, and I'm excited about returning in the summer some time.

Another fantastic thing about the UCU fair was the organization. We were inside the Seattle Center exhibition hall, which was large, very well lit, and gave customers enough room to walk around without stampeding each other. There was great music playing all day, but not so loud that we couldn't talk to each other. Volunteers frequently stopped by to ask if we needed anything, and everyone was so friendly! It was an amazingly professional show, and I can't thank the organizers enough!!

I know that it's a tough show to get into, and all the vendors had really high-quality wares. I just hope we'll have another opportunity to attend next year!

[photograph by http://zuppaartista.etsy.com, available for $12 here]

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December 3, 2008

Roadkill Badger Sandwiches


I got an amusing Google alert this morning (on the topic of "Badger Sandwich", which apparently is a real foodstuffs) for this blog post about folks who eat roadkill. No photos, unfortunately (is it really?), except for some excellent quotes:

Fergus is supposedly known as the Roadkill Chef in Europe. He is a self proclaimed vegetarian that only eats meat if it has been killed on the road by someone else.
Back when I first became a vegetarian (when I was 11), I thought this would be a noble way to go. I didn't want to be the person responsible for ending the life of another being. But roadkill and life-or-death situations were totally up for grabs. Luckily, I never had to survive by killing and eating something myself, or scraping something off the road.

If I ever run into a squooshed hedgehog though, I'll keep this recipe in mind:
Hedgehog spaghetti carbonara (serves four)

500g spaghetti, 30ml olive oil, 250g lean hedgehog, 1 medium onion (chopped), 125ml water, 60ml dry white wine, 4 eggs, 60ml double cream, 100g grated parmesan cheese · chop hedgehog into small chunks

beat eggs and cream together in a bowl. Add half the Parmesan cheese

put pasta in boiling water

put onions and hedgehog chunks in pan with olive oil on medium heat until onions are almost clear

add wine and reduce heat

drain pasta when cooked, combine it with egg, cream and cheese mix

add meat, onions and wine without draining fat and mix thoroughly

garnish with remaining Parmesan. Serve immediately
[quotes from http://mrbaggins1.livejournal.com/7474.html, Badger Pastel Painting by http://JeaneNevarez.etsy.com]

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December 1, 2008

News & Events


Holiday shopping is in full swing, and I've been busier than expected! Sean and I are getting ready for Urban Craft Uprising this weekend, which is our first trip to Seattle since moving to the west coast. We won't have time for site-seeing, but it'll be fun to stay in a hotel and be somewhere new. I also hope to get some holiday shopping of my own done!

I haven't had time to post this on our press page, but I thought it was cool that one of the local alternative papers here in Portland decided to include our mustache pint glass in their gift guide. I love the photo they used, and I just had to share!

We also ended up on CHOW.com's gift guide, which is pretty swanky. They sent me an awesome spatula for letting them photograph my glass. How nice is that?!

If you're in the Portland area, we'll also be attending Crafty Wonderland's Super Colossal Holiday Sale the second Sunday in December (the 14th). You can also buy some of our one-of-a-kind upcycled/reclaimed glassware at Trillium Artisans.

We never got our act together enough to offer new fused glass jewelry and magnets, but we're putting all our older ones on sale anyway! Pendants are now $20, and pins and magnets are all $6 each, while supplies last.

We'll be adding the new fused items to our shop as soon as they're ready, don't you worry!

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