Picture a Day - Day 347

I really hate that every time I log in to make a post there's my follower count staring me in the eye, taunting me with it's stupid number.

Some days it'll be all "Look at me, you lost another one cause you suck ha! How do you like that Sucky McSucks!"

Or "How come you can't ever get past 50? Everyone else can get more than 50. Why do you have have such a boring life?"

Well it's got me there, but still . . .

The web's seemed rather quiet or at least the parts I frequent have. Kinda like a restaurant on the edge of collapse; you still get a few regulars but haven't seen any new blood in nearly a year.

For now I'll just pretend that it's the economy, the creeping Old Man Winter and oh I'll blame the Holiday season as well. It's all the rage nowadays what with people apparently declaring war on what was once a Pagan day anyway.

Pictures, pictures, oh right pictures. It's stuff in the mail day! Yay!

I got in an order I placed from Sephora (which I also love as they load their boxes up with so much shipping paper it gets a reuse every time to help transport any of my paintings to waiting arms and walls).
The silver clutch was actually free and full of free samples of various things that I'd never thought a human being would need. I'm still desperately trying to surmise just what it is about enzymes that make them a deus ex machina for the dermatological world. Last I checked there were such a specific and easily denatured protein that there wasn't much chance they'd do much or survive outside the body.

But moving onto what I really ordered, see that cute looking cookbook in the box. It isn't full of recipes (though there are some in there so I sort of lied, sorry about that), nope it's chopped full of tasty sounding shower gels.
I just couldn't turn down the chance to bathe with pumpkin pie muffins or red velvet cake. The Pear Cobbler and cinnamon buns are just icing on the loofah.

Even the hot cocoa surprised me. I normally loathe the fake chocolate smell. It has a strange astringent on my nose, so much like canned spinach I pick up on it instantly that it's fake and wrong. But this one has a nice cream under layer to make it smell more like chocolate than I've ever smelt before!

(I tried to work that into my catch phrase when I was with the Chocostice league. Didn't really take off. Of course Supermars and BatM&M kept stealing all the air time).

So if you're looking for something for a baker or someone who just loves the smell of tasty baked goods (you know if you're buying for anyone who isn't a Plutonian) I'd recommend the Purity Cookbook.

To Hershey's Factory and Beyond!

Picture a Day - Day 346

Oh no! Friday the 13th!

AAAHHH!

This only occurs once every um, wait wasn't it Friday the 13th in February and then in March this year?

*combs through blog archives because it's a lot prettier than a desk calendar, ooh pie*

So by the third time in a year Friday the 13th is less of an "OH MY GOD WE'RE GONNA DIE" and more of an "Oops I dropped my mirror, these things happen."

A much more lackadaisical Friday the 13th requires a much less stringent warding off of the evil eye. Instead of throwing spilled salt over your shoulder, toss it into the sink.

Walk under ladders but bring an umbrella with you (up to you if you open it inside or not).

Call in the professionals to crack your bathroom mirror and haul it away.

But you still have to somewhat get into the spirit of things so best to avoid black cats and any black dogs that act like cats.
For winter, and because it gave him something to do, my husband bagged up all the leaves in our yard and dumped them inside the garden.

Which Essie naturally assumes was done fully for her entertainment.
After a quick run through the yard she zips straight into the leaf pile where she bounds and sniffs enjoying every last little foliage minute.

For the first time since she moved in there are times we actually have to go looking for her because instead of surgically attaching herself to our legs she's out in the garden doing whatever it is puppies do in a giant pile of leaves.
She's getting her Labrador nose in quite nicely as well. After a day in her kennel I let her out where she licked my face, ran to the backdoor, jumped a bit then ran into the garden.

Where after a few seconds of rutting she came up with her prized possession buried deep in the leaves.
We're gonna be in a sad state when that ball dies. She loves that thing to death. It's like her security blanket and ultimate must get Christmas toy all rolled into one.
She's even starting to sneak it inside because her Mom and Dad get a little tired of playing fetch for hours and hours every night.

Silly puppy.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! Remember stepping on cracks is okay as long as you know a good chiropractor and the best way to kill a vampire is threatening to take their eyeliner away.

Picture a Day - Day 345

I hope everyone had a much better Veterans Day than I did.

Previous post should explain some as well as the fact that I am into Defcon level three of my illness which means all that protective mucus my body built up in my lungs is now trying to escape through a series of body racking coughs and always at night.

And what a perfect segue from sputtering coughs to tasty food.

Over the weekend we made one of our bi-yearly adventures to Sams Club, and all without becoming horribly lost and resorting to eating our shoes somewhere around the giant piles of plastic silverware. We made it out with a few giant boxes of food stuffs that we don't see much elsewhere or were able to trick ourselves into thinking we were getting a good deal.

One such "deal" was a leg of lamb deboned and tied up in a roast.

While we have made lamb before it was in chop form and much easier to think of what to do (when in doubt, marinate and grill is my motto).

So I relied on a very simple and easy to make recipe that seems fancier than it really is.

First step is to chop up a couple bulbs of garlic. I always use the back of my knife and push down til I hear a little crack. Then the garlic paper all but falls off with a little nudging. So much faster.
Just slice the garlic into slivers. Don't worry you'll find out why later (or you could cheat and scroll to the end of the post, but you'd never do that. Cheating is wrong and hey get back here!).
Take a whole bunch of your favorite spices and mix them all together. I went with a more typical greek mix of oregano, rosemary, basil and for the hell of it tossed in a bay leaf or two.
Okay, now it's time to pull your leg of lamb out of the fridge and get it into a pan.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

What's a five letter word for making people wait because you're out of ideas?

Got it? Now just take out your paring knife . . . well go get that then, shesh . . . and cut some slits into your leg of lamb.
It can be either boneless or still have the bone in for this recipe, doesn't matter a bit. Though a lack of bone makes stabbing a lot easier.

Drizzle some lemon juice over the roast trying to work it into the slits a bit. Lamb and Lemon go together like McDonalds and frivolous lawsuits.
Time to find out why you slivered the garlic instead of randomly chopping it into little bits. See I knew you could be patient and oh you already figured it out. Well uh . . . the next step is to slide the garlic into the slits.

There will be quite a bit of manhandling but that's okay, the more you crush garlic the tastier it gets.
Now just rub your spice mix all over the roast.
Just pop this baby into a 325 degree oven for 1 and a half to 2 hours. I used my magical digital meat thermometer (that sucker is awesome and I'd never cook without it, if you don't have one go and get one now) and waited til it got around 145 before pulling it and letting it rest.

A little garnish of mashed potatoes and some gravy and voila fancy roast meal of lamb.
Have you had a lot of lamb or made it before? What's your favorite way to prepare it?

I've never been able to wrap my mind around the mint jelly idea but uh I may be willing to try it if someone else says that's tasty.

The funniest thing about this whole post, I don't even like roast very much. But it makes my husband happy and it isn't all that bad of a torture. There are worse ways to die than by meat and potatoes.

Fuck you Etsy!

Every place has its problems, its pluses and minuses. Reasons why people choose it over others.

I'd never heard of Etsy til I went looking for something for my wedding way back in 2007 and a friend who sold on their pointed me in their direction (and she never sells there anymore I might add).

Then all of a sudden it sprung up overnight all across the wedding blog sphere.

Only there's a little hidden secret that Etsy doesn't want any of you buyers to know.

Etsy couldn't give a flying shit about any of you.

It doesn't want you to be able to find things that you want or need. Instead it forces its daily rotation of cowls, owls, fake mustaches and terrariums down the throat of every person who dares to wander in and click on one of the thousands of Etsy admin picked gift guides.

And now as everyone starts to hunker down for Christmas Etsy has just given the biggest Fuck You to sellers and buyers alike.

Head over to Etsy today and you'll see a giant orange button that leads to the admin picked gift guides full of the same stuff that's gotten free advertising the entire year to fit the Etsy ideal. Their guides are full of nothing but the same shops over and over and I can't tell you the number of re-sellers (aka people who just buy wholesale and claim it's handmade) that have been found out thanks to the Etsy admin picked gift guides.

But the buttons aren't just relegated to the main page, no they show up everywhere. Including the main banner of a shops header:So assuming a customer is even able to navigate the nasty and horribly useless Etsy search and stumbles into your store, they suddenly see this bright orange "Gift Guide" button up top and naturally assume it's a gift guide for your shop.

Except it's not. It's just Etsy advertising for their handpicked shops on YOUR shop.

And it isn't even on just shop pages. Nope every single listing also leads right back to the Etsy Gift Guide:It isn't just a giant Fuck You to sellers, it's also to buyers. Buyers who don't want the Etsy approved ideal.

Etsy was sold to me as the place to buy anything handmade, but that isn't true anymore. It's the place to only buy Etsy admin approved items that they can't even bother to check and see if they're sweat shop produced or not.

I know Etsy became the buzz word for handmade across the wedding blogs but please I beseech you for Christmas, for anyone still doing the wedding thing, look elsewhere.

There's 1000 markets that's just started up. Or Artfire, where I also have a shop.

The fact is that Etsy has been screwing over sellers for so long a lot of the really talented non cowl makers jumped ship long ago and now have set up shop elsewhere. So a search of Artfire yields much better and quicker results than a comb through the crap at Etsy ever would.

Sadly, because buyers aren't aware of the other and better options out there the attention is still on Etsy and the fewer and fewer views are there but maybe if we spread the word a bit Artfire will become the next big thing.

Please just take a look, see what you think of it and spread the word if you can. People need to know they have other options for Christmas this year than just terrariums and fingerless gloves.

Picture a Day - Day 344

I have been a bit remiss at sharing all of the my latest and finished paintings and pendants with everyone here.

While it was easy to fall into the "Oh I'll just put it on twitter quick, get instant feedback and call it good" habit I also swear part of the problem was that I never had any good pictures.

Yesterday I finally decided no more excuses so for most of the day I trucked my pieces around trying to get as many good pictures as possible and then editing said photos before finally listing them in my stores.

I listed three different pendants (I actually have a fourth but it needs a few touch ups before its ready for its closeup) and one huge painting (okay huge for me, I swear some people will paint the side of a barn and ship that).

One of my pendants is for that nerd in your life who likes wisecracking and bad movies.
Another was back to the simple, a silhouetted raven about to take flight on stained wood.
And that big painting I was talking about? Well it's my 16X20 of a foggy forest walk. What still kills me about this painting is that it's all in black and white (and I swear it is, no color anywhere near that sucker) yet depending on where it sits on the wall it looks like it has a bit of a color sheen.
Now for the exciting news even though I still have more paintings I finished and listed to share.

All that stuff up there sold in under an hour of being listed!

Okay so I had a pretty good idea that the foggy forest was going to someone after a twitter back and forth or 10 but I had no idea she also planned to buy a few pendants.

And another shocker, someone also came in and swooped up the raven pendant. In fact the only one I still have in my shop was the third one I added yesterday.
It's my winter scene, for those yearning for some snow before the icy doldrums of January beats it out of us all.

And despite traveling into someones cart for a little bit it's still available for sale for the low low low low price of $6. (The more I think about it too, it'd make a cute gift tag for Christmas as well).

I also waited til today to list my dancing couple painting. Here's hoping it has as much success as my trees.
Hurray for one hell of a good painting sale day. I'd like to pretend that it's just up and up from here but well let's just say I'm starting to see the writing on the wall more and more at Etsy. (Maybe if I did paintings of owls wearing cowls).

But for now I shall revel in my small victory for a day. I always revel small victories with a small feast made up entirely of small foods and half danced by small rodents.

My pendants have been weirdly popular (I really thought they'd just disappear through the jewelry cracks never to be seen by anyone) and I was just wondering if there's anything you'd like to see on one of these bad boys?

Is there anything in my repertoire of paintings that you could see people wanting to wear around their neck? Or anything you'd want to give to someone else?