Imaginary Worlds – Atlanta Botanical Garden

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Rabbittude

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has had a wonderful exhibit going on over the summer that will continue through October called Imaginary Worlds. I’m sharing the rabbit and unicorn sculptures here and will try to upload other photos I took later to either Pinterest or Flickr. I’ve finally begun to set up the account on Flickr and need to begin loading some images there. I’ve had the account there for some time, but forgot about it and forgot how to get access to it. Oh well, time to see about putting it to use now.

The pictures of the bunnies came out the best the day we were at the gardens, because I was able to shoot the images mostly at them without much of the sky. It was a weird lighting day when we were there, one moment overcast and the next bright sunshine. That can be tricky to get the light and color right and I am still learning and trying to get a good working relationship going with getting the best images from our two digital cameras. I’m hoping we can go back again this month and enjoy all the sculptures again. Although the bunnies look like topiary, the garden calls the exhibits sculptures. That is a better description of the scope and size of these exhibits. The rabbits are some of the smallest, others are 20 to 25 feet in size. The inside image here with the running rabbit shows an example of the foundation that the sculptures are built on.

Tomorrow a story about Tigger and Shadow and rabbit transit …

Its Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Rabbittude

From time to time I check out HolidayInsights.com for the unusual day-to-day holidays they have. So today is Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day.

So I had some fun creating a treasury of bears that might travel easily to work. The treasury includes a number of bears have been created by members of the Etsy Rabbits team.

Two Wicked Wednesdays So Far This Month

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Rabbittude

Click here for the video up properly: Binky Day on youtube.com.

So last Wednesday was crazy with tornado siren testing and a loose pack of hounds. Today wasn’t a noise issue throwing things off, but rather a round of internet sites with lots of issues that messed with the planned schedule. Now that I am trying to catch up and write what I had intended, Leo is letting me know he would really rather have some attention. So I found this wonderful binky video to share.

Enjoy! I will be back tomorrow with some of what is going on at Rabbittude this month.

Treasured Tuesday – Tigger & Shadow

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Rabbittude

This is Tigger & Shadow on their plant tray lounger. They are covering so much of it you can barely see it the dark green edges of it. When we brought them home as babies, we looked around first at things we had that we could use for them. Then if we didn’t have something we could repurpose, we would look for things to buy. We had some green plastic plant trays about 6 inches wide by 30-36 inches long that we weren’t using. The pictures below show how we thought those plant trays would be used, to hold their pellet and water bowls in their play areas. We naïvely thought that trays would be used as trays to catch spilled food or water.

Little did we know, but the bunnies showed us that the plant trays were actually the perfect size for bunny furniture. Over the years, they would lounge on them and especially when older, I think they liked the ease of getting on and off them, but also still having a bit of support with the low sides. Perhaps part of their liking might also have been that the trays were plastic and maybe a bit cooler than the carpet on some of the hotter Georgia days.

I included a link in the first paragraph to clearly see a picture of the type of tray we used. These are available lots of places, but I am using Amazon for some sample pictures of things we have used with the rabbits, since I can pin things on Amazon to our new Pinterest board: House Rabbits at Home. I plan to use that board to show some of the things that we have used or are planning to try now with Leo so that others can get ideas or give comments on items on the board if they have used similar things.

Tomorrow some of the things that are up in the studio here …

A Plan for Leo

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Rabbittude

On Saturday, I shared a gallery of images of Leo with his blankie in his pen. This is Leo in his little cardboard box that is on the back side of one of the office desks. Now that is a cozy hiding spot for him and we make it even cozier at times by draping one of his blankies over it to serve as a doorway similar to a tent flap doorway.

However, Leo has some expansion coming to that space. I was surfing around the internet looking at bunny products and saw that the Busy Bunny is on vacation. They have a notice that all orders placed now while they are on vacation will get a 10% discount and then the orders will ship after they return from vacation. So orders placed now will start shipping the week of October 14th. Any discount is helpful and that decided me to look and see what they might have that Leo might like.

The Deluxe Hopper Hideaway is now on order for Leo and will be here in just a couple of weeks for him to have greatly expanded cardboard hideaway housing:

The two cardboard houses are joined by a tunnel in between – the houses have openings on all four sides in which additional tunnels can be inserted. The tunnels notch securely into the houses, and have a swinging door in the middle for more run-through fun.

Leo will be tripling his space on the back side of the desk. His new little hideaway will fill that space. Once we have it in place, we will try to share a picture of him hopefully enjoying it. Sometimes things we buy for Leo are complete misses. He is a very different rabbit in some of his likes and dislikes compared to Tigger, Shadow and Portia. Anyway, since The Busy Bunny has that sale in place now, it is a good time to check out if they have any products that your bunny might like. They have hideaways and tunnels in cardboard and willow. Their willow rings are a chew toy that Tigger and Shadow absolutely loved, Shadow in particular. Portia was more fond of willow balls and not the rings. Leo also prefers the willow balls to the chew rings.

More bunny stories to come this week as well as info on what is going on in the Rabbittude studio …

Leo Linus

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Rabbittude

Ah a bunny and his blankie. Leo has now become Leo Linus the Lionhead bunny. Like the character Linus in the comic strip Peanuts, when Leo heads for the comfort of his pen, he takes his blankie with him all around the pen. With Tigger and Shadow, it was hard to give them things made of fabrics, because Shadow tried to consume everything he could sink his teeth into. With them for the sake of Shadow’s digestive health, we had to stick with lots of things made of straw or jute that would be digestible.

When we first saw Leo at the shelter, they had him in a pen that was about 4 feet square with his necessaries: food, water, litter box. The only extras were a cardboard box to hide in and a piece of sweatshirt fabric to play with or also hide under.When we brought him home a year ago, we sought to recreate as much of the environment he was used to as we could.

We created a 6 x 4 foot pen for him with wire cube sets and cable ties and installed his food, water and a corner litter box. We got him some willow accessories and toys that the other buns had liked. We didn’t have an old sweatshirt to sacrifice for him. So we headed off to the fabric store to see what we could find. The sweatshirt fabric piece that the shelter had for him was the type without the fuzzy back, just a smooth weave. That was good because he wouldn’t have consumed lots of fuzz from it if he chewed it. The fabric store only had the fuzzy back type of sweatshirt material, so we started looking at other things. They had blanket fleece on sale and had the really cute paw print pattern you see in the gallery images. We bought a yard and then I cut that down into four pieces, so Leo has four blankies.

As you can see the blankie is a huge hit with Leo. He pulls it all around his pen, snuggling with it, playing with it and using it for warmth too. The last image with him in the tunnel he has actually pulled the blanket up to cover the back part of himself that is extending beyond the tunnel. Everyone once in a while, I have to rescue the blankie from his water bowl when an edge of it falls in and starts to soak up all his water. With four blankies, he always has one that will be clean and dry should he mess up his current one.

Enjoy the gallery and your weekend! More to come next week …

Friday Find

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Rabbittude

I just really loved this crocheted bunny rabbit when I saw it. How cute is it to have this white rabbit with curlers, robe and bunny slippers? It is so wonderful to see the creative things handmade artists come up with. This bunny rabbit is from Barb’s Macrame on Zibbet.com a growing real handmade marketplace.

Tomorrow I will have something special to share about Leo.

Not Quite According to Plan Today

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Rabbittude

So today was a bit of a trying to catch up day. I had planned a special gallery of photos for Leo today but didn’t quite get finished with what I needed for the images and will share that Saturday instead. Time flew by today trying to fit the work of two days into one, since a good chunk of yesterday ended up lost time.

Yesterday was a reminder of how easily rabbit nerves are disturbed by noise. Leo had way more than his share to deal with. The first Wednesday of every month at noon, they test tornado sirens in our area. The wailing of those sirens even on a sunny day is a very eerie reminder of danger. For some reason yesterday, they ended up doing two separate tests about fifteen minutes apart. That was unsettling and had me looking out the window again to double-check the weather was still bright, sunny and clear.

Then as if that wasn’t enough noise, shortly after the sirens, it became clear there were some hounds hunting in the woods that run behind our home and the homes running along on either side of ours. I could hear them going back and forth off into the distance and then closer behind our house and it was obvious they were hunting and baying loudly as the moved back and forth through the woods. After more than an hour, they came out of the woods on to our property roaming around front to back and it was clear at that point that no one was hunting with them, they had gotten away from someone or their home somehow. It was at least another hour before animal control was able to come and pick them up. Fortunately for the dogs, they had collars with a phone number and were quickly reunited with their owner.

Poor Leo though had a very unsettling afternoon and was clearly not ready to settle down again easily afterwards. I can’t blame him, the sirens and then the continuous baying of the hounds didn’t do great things for my nerves either. When Blaine came home, he sat down to pet Leo and accidentally knocked something and Leo was off like a shot. So no nice nap for Leo yesterday, he spent the afternoon on full bunny alert. Thankfully today has been quiet, so Leo is calm again.

Tomorrow a cute bunny rabbit find.

Rabbittude on Pinterest

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Rabbittude

This past month while I have waited out the fall allergy season a bit, I have had some fun getting back to Pinterest. It is easy to pin things when dealing with allergy or antihistamine brain fog compared to projects or tasks requiring a higher level of thinking ability. I started pinning again to our Rabbittude Pinterest boards and now have hundreds of bunny rabbit images and hundreds more bunny rabbit inspired products. I’ve started another board that only has a few dozen items now. I will work to grow it with products that we have used or would like to check for rabbit care / care homes with house rabbits in residence.

Then there is a board of garden dreams and all the wonderful things that would be in an ideal garden retreat if time, space or money were no object. Since they are, these wonderful images are great to have a visual retreat to green spaces. I’ve heard that looking at images of green spaces are beneficial for stress relief. So I wanted to create a feast for myself there and for anyone else who wants to follow the board.

In addition to the bunny boards, there are ones for some favorite colors, styles, wonderful animals, animal inspired items, the seasons, nature photography, things for laughs, quotes to live by or laugh by and an ideas and tutorials board. There are also three boards that are all items from Zibbet.com a real handmade marketplace:

Have You Heard of Zibbet?
BROWN on Zibbet
Shop Local Georgia

We opened a couple of shops on Zibbet this past month: Rabbittude Buntique and Birdsong Supplies. Zibbet.com is a growing marketplace of real handmade, vintage and supply items. One of the reasons we decided try out Zibbet is the plan to have a feature in a coming upgrade that will allow some integration of the shops with our website to bring some shopping ability right to the Rabbittude website. That is a very attractive option possibility, so we wanted to expand to Zibbet. We also have a shop on Etsy, Buntique and are looking at how we will divide inventory between the venues. We’ll talk more about what is in our shops at another time and what is coming from the studio.

The Brown on Zibbet and Shop Local Georgia boards are Zibbet Picks boards that I am helping out with volunteer pinning. Pinning items from Zibbet for the brown board makes me feel so hungry. Have you ever noticed just how many brown colors are food and beverage names? There is cappuccino, caramel, cashew, chocolate, cocoa, coffee, cognac, dark honey, espresso, fudge, gingerbread, hazelnut, java, latte, maple, mocha, molasses, toffee and whiskey. I should be gaining weight just looking at the colors!

Seeing how the Zibbet Picks boards are set up inspired me to get back involved with our Pinterest account. I really considered how to better set our boards up to have some great bunny rabbit boards to start building for people to enjoy. The opportunity to begin to volunteer on the Zibbet boards gave me something to do during a rough patch in the allergy season that helped me feel energized and active which was great towards feeling I was accomplishing something useful on a few days when doing much more than clicking seemed to need way too much thinking power. So it really helped me out and then was doubly sweet to receive a very special thank you this week from Zibbet. Each week they have a blog piece called the Fantastic Five and pick five items to showcase. This week they picked five items from shops of volunteers. It was so incredibly sweet to have the bookmark with the artwork piece I did of Shadow and Tigger be one of the five items chosen.

If you like Pinterest, check out the Rabbittude boards. I will be looking to add lots more bunny rabbit things there and build more of a following and look for other boards and people to follow.

For October

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Rabbittude

Stayed tuned … bunny fun to come …

Here it is the first day of October and I wanted to get back in gear again with the Rabbittude blog. I’m looking ahead this month and planning to post a new blog post each day sharing bunny stories or photos, along with what we are up to in our studio here and things we have found on the web of interest to bunny lovers.

Spots and Hipster Rabbits

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Rabbittude

I had a spot of fun today in honor of Leo. It is coming up on a year with him next month. That has me thinking polka dots, spotted rabbits, manly rabbits with mustaches. So I created a treasury of items on Etsy that makes me think of Leo. If they had a rabbit with bangs like Leo that would have been great. Only Leo seems to have the troll doll-like mop top. I haven’t seen a picture of another rabbit with the same banging bangs.

Jumping Jacks?

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Rabbittude

Source: whimsicalraindropcottage.tumblr.com via Cora on Pinterest

A fabulous active rabbit image found on the web today. Bunny rabbit lovers will probably want to check out the Pinterest board this first appeared on to see some other wonderful bunny rabbit images and items.