Dust Bunny Watch

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Rabbittude

Click image to see our dust bunny shirts

Tonight we are on alert for the possibility of a dust bunny uprising. I cleared out the master bedroom today in a delayed spring cleaning. Shhh, there are now less dust bunnies here …

I am hoping that the dust bunny colonies in other parts of the house did not get wind of the activity. It is always amazing how quickly the dust bunnies grow and multiply when there are real rabbits in the house. When I start to clean hard floors, you can see the dust bunnies scurrying away across the smooth open stretches trying to make it into the corners to hide.

Hopefully I won’t be attacked in my sleep and will be back to blog again tomorrow.

Newest Rabbit Photos

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Rabbittude

Click image for Shy Bunny Lanyard

Click image for Floral Rabbit Lanyard

Everyone knows that it is hard to get good pictures of kids and pets because they just won’t sit still.So you would think product photography of little bunny rabbit items would be a snap. Well they don’t sit so still either.

I was trying yesterday and today to retake the photos for one item and get images taken of a new item.Both items are cell phone / zipper pull / key chain charms, so they are designed to hang. Getting a sitting portrait of an item that isn’t meant to sit can be a challenge. Finally after lots of coaxing with them, success!

I just love these little Asian porcelain rabbit beads, the one looks so shy and bashful and the other looks like a rabbit that is taking charge and hopping away leash and all! The glass bellflower beads were so lovely, I bought a variety of colors to work with on projects. I love the garden feel they give to these lanyards. The lanyards are nylon cord with iridescent threads woven throughout, so there is also a soft sparkle with these.

Making these was a joy. All the elements have beautiful colors and textures. I love the bunny rabbit in the garden feel of them and the feminine look. I had a friend stop over after I made the first one with the reds and corals. She bought one right away. So that was a nice compliment for me that the lanyard charm had the “charm” I wanted.

Dust Bunny Concerns

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Rabbittude

Dust Bunnies in the Rabbittude Etsy Shop

The Dust Bunnies are on alert in the Rabbittude Etsy Shop

Our dust bunnies have been sneaking out of their hiding places and reading recent posts about the Simplify Your Life Week due to start on Monday. They are deeply concerned that this is going to spur a move to serious cleaning, putting their very existence at risk.

They have gathered support and moved themselves up to the featured area on the Rabbittude Etsy shop in preparation for a major protest against any movement towards a clean sweep. We think the existence of the majority of the dust bunnies here is due to Tigger and Shadow. We fixed them so they couldn’t reproduce real rabbits. They have been showing us ever since that time that they still have a means to multiply and bring lots of little dust bunnies into our world.

Anytime I seek to sweep dust bunnies away, our dust bunny creators will interfere. I have started to picture all the little dust bunnies rising up in protest against me. I picture myself tied up someday in a fuzzy version of Gulliver’s Travels.

So I hope the dust bunnies will remain calm and reasoned this coming week. I will be talking about ways to keep things simple with rabbits in the house, but don’t have any major cleaning initiatives planned for them.

Saturday Thoughts and News

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Rabbittude

Late last night, I discovered that our Etsy shop has received Google syndication so that it appears in the Google shopping results. This has been a hotly debated subject on Etsy since the rollout for this syndication of Etsy shops began sometime last year. I have seen reports from shops that it helped a lot while other sellers say they haven’t seen any difference at all in their views or sales.

With a tough economy though, many want to believe that getting into that extra place will be the thing that gets them to the sales level they are seeking. So the slowness of Etsy and Google making this happen for all Etsy sellers is causing a lot of negativity. Many of the unsyndicated feel they aren’t on an even playing field.

The jury is out for us on this one until some time has passed. Since summer is a slower time for people looking for bunny rabbit items, unless they are a true rabbit enthusiast, it may not make much difference for us receiving this syndication now. Springtime would have provided a better testing time for Rabbittude. We will keep to our plans and see what this does or doesn’t do for our views and sales going forward. At least now in the Google shopping, items from our CafePress store and Etsy shop are appearing together to give people who are finding us for the first time a wider variety of choices.

Learning we were syndicated did prompt a really good look over all our current listings to make sure they met the rules to be picked up by the feed. I was editing late into the night. Then this morning Blaine was going back through and reviewing, looking for typos or things that didn’t make sense. That provided a funny view of the difference in how the guys view descriptions. Blaine told me I had a problem on one listing. I asked which one and his response was, “the silver bunny earrings with violet whatevers”. Which was his translation of Sterling Bunny Rabbit Earrings, Violet Swarovski Butterflys.

Changing subjects to Poo in review: In The Wonderful World of Bunny Poo, I talked about a Creative Breakroom challenge I had seen for “Jars O Crap”. Even though the challenge is past, I was going to do an upscaled bunny poo in a jar product picture and description a la that challenge theme for fun. However, my rabbits aren’t the poo producers I had thought. Well they are, but they aren’t as messy outside the box as I thought which is the best means of collecting clean dry poo. Either they have gotten very tidy right when I decided to collect a small jar of their random poos, or they were never as messy as I assumed. Live and learn. If I ever get a jar collected, I will do a blog post with my hypthetical product listing.

Tomorrow I will share some photos. The first week of August has been designated as a Simplify Your Life week. So, I have posts planned starting Monday on how to simplify and make things easier with house rabbits as part of the household equation. I will share a lot of the things we have discovered and learned that have helped us.

Just backyard bunnies and crickets in here tonight …

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Rabbittude

Shadow and I are both a bit under the weather today. I am saving my remaining oomph to medicate him and not up to finalizing the post I had in process for today. So I will have several posts tomorrow instead.

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Bunny Poo Comparison Shopping – Yes, You Actually Can …

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Rabbittude

Cuckoo for Cocoa Poos ?

This weekend, I started some research on rabbit poo that is for sale on the web. See The Wonderful World of Bunny Poo yesterday for how this investigative trail got started.

I had put a potential name of Cheeripoos below the picture of our bunny poo since the bunnies eat so much oat hay. However, Blaine thought that Cocoa Poos for the deep chocolate coloring might be more descriptive. Here we are already disagreeing about the name for a hypothetical product.

Someone commented yesterday that they thought that bunny poo might be available for sale on Ebay. So I had to look. Yes, you can find rabbit manure for sale on Etsy, Ebay and Amazon. Ebay had the most sellers, so the best ability to comparison shop is there.

I found three sellers of bunny poo on Ebay. The first seller advertises 6 lb. Rabbit Manure!!~~Best Organic Fertilizer There Is! The Buy It Now price is $6.99 with an $11.00 shipping cost. The picture shows the rabbit producers with their food bowl which I think is a nice touch. There is an excellent description with lots of benefits and reasons for using bunny poo. I like the added touch of using a green color for the text. It gives it a nice eco conscious feel. This seller says, “YOU’LL NEVER GO BACK TO MIRACLE GRO!!!” which is a strong closing. They have this listed with more than 10 available which is a scary quantity of rabbit poo sitting out there somewhere waiting to be bought.

The second seller on Ebay has two rabbit poo products for sale. They have 6 lb or 10 lb Rabbit Manure, Organic Fertilizer. Both sizes are Free Shipping. The 6 lb size is $16.95, while 10 lbs is $21.95. Awww, I open up the listing and see they have a description with a cute cartoon that includes a rabbit and a worm poking its head up out of the ground (one assumes fertilized with bunny poo!). There is a picture of the rabbit poo which looks disturbingly like pebbles on the beach in beige, gray and sandy colors rather than the deep colors I am used to seeing with our bunnies. So now I am concerned about the health of their rabbits. They call their product “Bunny Berries”. They say they make every effort to ship the manure “dry”. Eeeuwww, TMI. The background throughout is green providing a professional look to the listing with an eco feel.

Unlike the first seller, this seller has filled out the Ebay Item specifics. They give the condition as New. I guess a real debate could start as to whether manure / compost / fertilizer is new or used. I think I have to disagree with the “in its original packaging” part of the new statement. Wouldn’t that be still inside the rabbit? Anyway they list the application as “All Purpose” and I decidedly would not go that far. This seller also has more than 10 available on both the 6 lb and 10 lb listings. So this seller has an unreal amount of rabbit poo sitting around somewhere.

Which brings us to the final Ebay seller who has Rabbit Manure for a natural fertilizer. They too have filled out the item specifics with the bunny poo listed as New? However they have the application listed as being for plants, much better. They estimate weight at roughly 14 lbs. The Buy It Now price is $5 with $14.95 in shipping cost, however there is a Make an Offer option. You can haggle price on this one! However, they have less poo available, only 4 currently. This listing is straight black and white, so no eco conscious vibe. They have a nice description which almost makes it sound cute: “Rabbit manure is very unique, as it is solid, and comes in small round droppings a little larger than a b.b. pellet. They are almost like a time release capsule, and perfect for your garden.”

Wow, this is a whole lot more bunny poo for sale than I expected to find online! I am now running way late and pooped out.

A Quick Note …

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Rabbittude

Just popping in quickly here to say I am working on further research into bunny poo and what is already out there in the internet marketplace. A couple of comments yesterday sent me off looking for more things than I had thought of. Quite amazing really what people have for sale these days. I will post more later today, perhaps early evening for those on US Eastern standard time.

The Wonderful World of Bunny Poo

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Rabbittude

Oat Hay + Rabbit = Cheeripoos ?

As a cottage industry, seriously. I have often fantasized about getting the bunnies to earn their own keep. I had read at one time about a how-to book that had information for using bunny poo to start a worm farm and then sell the worms to fishermen. Blaine has a wonderful green thumb and we use bunny poo in our garden. So I have always been aware of the rich fertilization in the poo since it is already composted veggies and hay. It is also nice hard dry little marbles that are easy to pick up and don’t have much of an odor.

However, I had never heard or thought about the possibility of actually selling bunny poo online. I had just recently joined the Creative Breakroom forum. In one thread I learned about a challenge they had a while back for “Jars O Crap”. Everyone was to take a Mason jar and fill it with whatever, take pictures and then list their jars online.

Looking through the challenge thread and the very creative responses had me laughing myself silly. This is the one I loved the most: Un Bocal des Peaux D’Oignons. Oh so very special, I am almost tempted to buy it myself. If I had been there at the time to take part, the title had me thinking quite literally about my most available free item here, a jar of bunny poo!

So I got into a discussion in the Breakroom on the topic of bunny poo. What do you say the expiration date is on a bottle full of bunny poop? What kind of shelf life does that have? Or does it become vintage at some point? Rapid thoughts were running through my head as to whether that would be tagged as handmade or a supply. Do I say I made it myself or it was created by my rabbit collective? Some pointed out that a bottle could have explosive gas issues and that holes in the top or a plastic bag with a nice label might be better.

As we were verbally flinging the poo back and forth in this discussion, one member asked another if they had heard back officially on this. That is when I found out that someone had investigated whether selling bunny poo on Etsy was allowed. They were told that it was, as long as local laws and regulations in regards to animal compost are met. Hey, I am living in a farming community! I will just bet I can find out about that! That is where hysterically funny idea meets up with actual business opportunity. Too funny!

I suppose I should be incredibly alarmed with myself that the idea of selling bunny poo has generated more creative marketing ideas in my head than anything else this year. Perhaps there are whole huge cottage industries out there for the unemployed to sell pet waste and help feed their families. I did check this morning on Etsy and there are current active listings there for both Rabbit Manure and Llama Beans.

Objectively, the picture for the Llama beans was a great deal cleaner (does that term ever apply to compost?) than the Rabbit Manure. The Llama Bean title is also more appealing than Rabbit Manure which sounds a bit too down on the farm for eco conscious urban viewers. So I sense an opportunity to upscale the market for rabbit compost / fertilizer. I am intrigued in my research today on Etsy to see how many people have tagged their items with fertilizer when they aren’t selling compost ??? I am not at all certain about the thinking on that one for SEO keyword searches.

At this point, I have no idea where I am going (is that a poor word choice?) with this. The minimum I expect is to have some great fun and laughs here for the blog. Since laughs have been in short supply at many points this year that will be oh so welcome. So stay tuned for poo!

I Don’t Know Nothin’ About Birthin’ No Blog

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Rabbittude

Greetings Bunny lovers. I’m Pappa Bunny. Momma Bunny had a rough day today. **Tigger !! No !!! No !!! Stop that !!** She fought off pirates yesterday who hijacked her Twitter. **Shadow!! Quit chewing on that !! Bad Bunny !!** She is enjoying a little quiet time. Me, I’m trying to keep the babies out of trouble (fat chance), and help out a little bit here.

Tigger has shown remarkable improvement over last weekend. Looking at her, you would never guess she was at death’s door then. Her appetite is back to normal, and she is being very good about eating hay. I swear we have the only two rabbits in the world who don’t like timothy hay. I tried a new brand of timothy on them last night, and they seem to have eaten it all. **Tigger !!! Leave Shadow alone !!** Sorry about the interruptions. Bunnies will be bunnies.

I am still concerned about Shadow. He has a lot of energy, and is still very playful for his age. It’s just that his appetite seems to be slowly decreasing. At his last few vet visits, he has dropped a little bit of weight each time. I am going to try to make some banana / critical care balls for him. Maybe he has a slight blockage. Or he just needs a little something to stimulate his appetite more. **Shadow!! Get down off of Momma’s chair.**

It is so hard watching them grow old. It seems like yesterday that we had two hyperactive little puff-balls running around like maniacs, getting their little bunny selves into everything. They were a lot of work, and at times very exasperating. But I wouldn’t change it for anything. Even those runs around the dining room table at midnight trying to get Shadow to go to bed.

Thanks for letting me share with you. Momma Bunny should be ready to go for tomorrow. Me? I gotta go feed the Prince and Princess another pile of kale leaves.

Hackers, Phishers and Frauds, Oh My!

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Rabbittude

I am not sure exactly what happened on Twitter today, because until just a couple of hours ago, I hadn’t been on Twitter. It appears however, that someone else was very busy today on Twitter using my direct messaging to send out lots of spam.

I HATE SPAM! BIG YUCK! The best I can remember, I got an email earlier today notifying me of a direct message from someone I recognized. I must have clicked on it. I don’t remember clearly, I was in a hurry. Doing whatever unthinking thing I did with that email gave someone access I didn’t intend. This is one of the things that hackers and phishers count on. Sooner or later we all rush and don’t pay attention when something looks legitimate. Then they get what they need to take over and use someone’s account.

If you got an email about receiving a direct message from me today on Twitter and haven’t opened it, delete it. The only messages I have sent have been responses to people who were kind enough to let me know what was going on with my account so that I could work to stop it. If you rushed like me with an email about a direct message and possibly clicked on anything, change your Twitter password now.

I am so very sorry to all who received spam messages today from my account.

Hanging In

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Rabbittude

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{_O_}{_O_}_____)|(|)❀/❀)|(❀/)|)|/(|)❀(|❀❀()(/

Today is a hanging in there day. Tigger and Shadow are better. However I am not. I have been in a number of car accidents. Something today has triggered part of my spine into a slipping in and out-of-place mode. So I am up and down a lot and not able to sit still for very long at a time at the computer. Not too much is getting accomplished workwise today.

Tomorrow I will share a couple Etsy treasuries I created this week and pick out a Follow Friday recommendation too.

New at Rabbittude !!!

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Rabbittude

: Bun Appetit stoneware rabbit food bowls in small and large size

Today we are announcing a new set of products available in our CafePress shop with our new Bun Appetit design! Bunnies can go on a feeding frenzy with their own Bun Network star chefs. We also have our new Shops page loaded here on the blog to show you some previews of what you can buy in our shops.

Rabbittude

Rabbits + Attitude = Rabbittude

Category Archives: Rabbittude Updates