Follow Friday – Just Tomatoes

Just Tomatoes Online Store

Click on image to go to website

JustTomatoes.com is our second recommendation today for bunnies and humans.  They carry dried fruits and vegetables.  You can order from their online store or check the website to see if their products are carried in a store near you.

 
The colors and tastes of their dried foods are just wonderful.  Our bunnies are fond of the bananas and mango as treats.  Just make sure to make treats a rare treat part of the diet since fruit is fattening for bunnies!  We love the fruits too as a snack or added to plain cereals.  If you have recipes calling for dried fruits or veggies, their products would be great.
 
They carry both conventional and organic product choices.

Follow Friday – Busy Bunny

Busy Bunny Online Store

Click image to go to their online store

BusyBunny.com is a company with products our bunnies have just loved over the years.

Tigger & Shadow’s favorites have always been the willow chew products, grass mats and the various cardboard tunnels, cottages and boxes that they have.  Here are links to two favorite willow items and search pages for the grass mats and the cardboard tunnels and hideouts available:

Bunny Chew Ring

Willow Tunnel

Grass Mats 

Cardboard Tunnels & Hideouts 

They have also had things over the years we have picked up for ourselves: rabbit magazines, figurines, jewelry.  Hoppy shopping!

A Treasury for Thursday – Singing for Blues

Singing for Blues Etsy Treasury
Click on image above to go to Etsy treasury

Etsy has a Treasury Challenge NonTeam that has a challenge beginning each Thursday at noon running through Sunday noon for treasuries to be created around one chosen item.  Read more details about the nonteam challenge and participating if you have an Etsy shop:  http://treasurychallengenonteam.blogspot.com/

 
I loved the turquoise blue glass beads of this weeks featured item  with the gold swallow (top right corner item) which leant itself to choosing lovely bird and woodland items with a couple bunnies snuck in too!

Bunana Addicts

Bunana Addicts

Design available on T shirts and other fun items in our CafePress store and as ACEO mini art in our Etsy shop

We created two bunny banana addicts. We didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t think we had done it, but we did it.

Everything we read said rabbits liked bananas too much and they are too fattening for them. So we planned to make these a rare treat and not get them addicted.

When Tigger and Shadow were babies, just months old, we had them spayed / neutered.  Afterwards as a precaution, the vet wanted them on antibiotics. We didn’t want to try to hold them down for medication when they were recovering from surgery. So we had what we thought was a great idea to give them medicated “banana sandwiches”. We took small Asian dipping bowls and put a really thin banana slice in the bottom, squirted the medication on the slice and covered it with another really thin banana slice. Both bunnies were nice enough to eat everything and even lick the bowls. They took their medication, but in one short week, we created addicts for life.

Fast forward to a few years later … Banana treats have been rare, maybe once or twice a year. We think they don’t remember those early days and that smooth banana taste and texture or the heady banana smell. Usually, we would eat bananas where Tigger and Shadow didn’t have access. However, one day I walk into the living room with a cereal bowl in my hand and the last bite of banana in my mouth. As soon as I sit down, I have a black rabbit bouncing on my lap inspecting my bowl. Shadow rapidly looses interest in the cereal and starts stretching up my chest, patting me on the chin with his paws, and sniffing my mouth. He is so close, his whiskers are tickling up my nose. It occurs to me that he can smell that last banana bite in my mouth and I’m supposed to give it over. I let Blaine know later that we need to be careful about our own banana use.

My warning is forgotten and a couple of weeks later, Blaine walks into the living room with an evening snack for himself, a bowl of cereal with a cut up banana. He sits down on the sofa and is immediately overwhelmed with Tigger and Shadow bouncing all over his lap and trying to dive into his cereal bowl. It is amazing to watch two high energy rabbits bounce around so much and so fast they look like a pack of rabbits. After watching the show for a minute or so, I decide I had better respond to my husband’s howls for help. Fortunately, our pantry included some dried banana slices and I was able to lure our two addicts to another part of the room so that my husband could quickly consume his banana.

The moral is that bananas and rabbits are a combustible combination. Watch yourself if you ever plan to combine the two! Addicts are easily created and humans are in danger if they ever try to keep a bunny addict from the banana. To enjoy a banana now myself , I have to sneak out to the garage, patio or lock myself in a bathroom.

Another Treasury … Nesting

Click the image to go to the treasury on Etsy to see the items

Since I think in images, I have created a couple lovely treasuries today.  Switching to pictures is the most natural thing for me to do when I find my energy level lagging a bit.  It is like dropping back into my native language.  Enjoy! 

Get Off My Tail!

Get Off My Tail Bumper Sticker

Click for Single Bumper Sticker

Get Off My Tail Bumper Sticker

Decorating our bunny supply cabinet

Get Off My Tail 10 Pack of Bumper Stickers

Click for 10 pack savings

Get Off My Tail 50 Pack of Bumper Stickers

Click for 50 pack savings

Blaine had an idea for a design: a line of hopping away hares called Receding Hare Line.
I created a couple of versions of artwork. Later while looking at the bumper sticker options available in our CafePress store, I realized a single line of the receding hares would work as a bumper sticker.

Get Off My Tail ! came quite quickly to mind for the wording. I really hate the tailgating traffic here in Atlanta that leads to quite a few accidents. Blaine and I have both been rear ended by drivers not paying attention.

It also occurred to me that this could be really great on lockers or cubicle walls. You can send a message you are stressed out by too much supervision. We have this on a file cabinet where we store a lot of bunny supplies. The message would be for our rabbits if they could read, since they dance around us like crazy when we go into the cabinet to get something for them.

This is currently our top-selling item in our CafePress shop. It is available as a single bumper sticker or in multi packs. So there are a couple of levels of discounted pricing available if you would like to purchase for a group or for resale.

Follow Friday – An Etsy Find: Bellina Creations

Green Jade Bronze Wire Wrapped Birds Nest Ring

Click image go to item

Sapphire Blue Quartz Necklace

Click image go to item

Catseye And Copper Wire Wrapped Marble Sea Glass Necklace

Click image go to item

For my second Follow Friday post today, I have an Etsy find, jewelry artist Bonnie of Bellina Creations.  I have really just started to get to know her as the captain of the Etsy team, Lean on Me.  I can see already I am going to enjoy the very positive atmosphere she has created in the team threads and the many friendly people who have been drawn to the team.

This is a find, she just opened her shop less than six months ago.  Reading her profile I see she is one of the many who have become unemployed in this economy.  In her own words she is “taking a leap of faith and finding a different road”.

You will find lovely jewelry in her shop that is beautifully photographed.  I picked three favorite pieces to showcase here.   She currently has over 120 handcrafted jewelry items.

I love what she shares about her sea glass: 

But sea glass has a little piece of my heart. The reason behind this is that I put so much of myself into it. Each piece is found by me and can take days sometimes weeks to find a jewelry quality piece. Seeing that little shining gem lying amongst the rocks and sand is like finding a treasure!

I think there are many treasures waiting in her shop, so check her out: http://BellinaCreations.etsy.com.

Celebrate International Carrot Day

International Carrot Day Treasury on Etsy

Click image above to go to Etsy treasury

Seriously, as rabbit lovers,  this was irresistible.   Twitter users started sharing the link over the weekend for International Carrot Day, April 4th. Logically, an Etsy treasury devoted to carrots had to follow, with a few carrot loving rabbits too.

Here’s a carrot fact from Bugs Bunny cartoon history. The voice of Bugs, Mel Blanc, hated carrots. They tried all kinds of fruits and vegetables to see if biting in and crunching something else could sound like a carrot. Nothing but a carrot sounded like a carrot. So Mel would bite in and crunch on the carrots and then spit them out.

Sorry Mel, but for us it is time to pause and get our paws on some lovely carrots!

April Fool’s Day Fun and Silliness

Silly Rabbits & Friends Etsy Treasury for April Fool's Day

Click on image to go to Etsy treasury

At Rabbittude, we are always up for a good laugh year round, so we would wish for more than one day dedicated to silliness, laughter and fun.  Ah, well, that is why we have bunnies to keep us going with foolishness in between.  We will make do with the day we have to be our completely quirky, wacky selves today.

Here is a treasury I created of wonderful lighthearted fun things made by Etsy artisans:  Silly Rabbit’s & Friends for April Fool’s Day.

Great Blog Post Alert!  The Rabbittude Get Off My Tail bumper sticker has been included in this wonderful Feature Friday blog by Frostings sharing humorous Etsy items for April Fool’s Day: http://tncakes.blogspot.com/2011/04/feature-friday-april-fools-day.html.  It is wonderful to be included here, but I am not posting it here just to brag (okay, bragging just a little bit).  I think this is a great list of Etsy items, they all made me laugh and smile.  I am really partial to the take off on Keep Calm and Carry On created by Sad Little Crown, Fling Yourself on the Bed and Cry Uncontrollably.  It reminds me so much of Despair.com’s parody of beautiful photo art motivational training posters.  Sometimes the motivational stuff just really doesn’t do it and you have to let it all out and then move on.  ~Rebecca Pullin

Treasury Blitz for the Georgia Etsy Team

Nature Walk Treasury

Click image above to go to treasury

Moms Zoo Etsy treasury

Click image above to go to treasury

Handmade Georgia Etsy treasury

Click image above to go to treasury

It was a blast this morning participating in a treasury blitz for the Georgia Etsy team.  Our goal was to increase the visibility of Georgia Etsy team shops, all based in Georgia USA. We had a number of team members creating treasuries, clicking and commenting on the treasuries and promoting them on their other teams and social networks. It was a flurry of treasury activity between 7 and 10 am this morning.

Around noon, more than a dozen of the treasuries had made it to the top ten pages of the Etsy Treasury.  That is so wonderful to see when there are currently over 24,000 treasuries. We are celebrating that all three of the Rabbittude treasuries made it to page seven or above, with the Nature Walk Finds making it to page two!  Georgia Etsy Team Caption Mod MomMe  had all three of her treasuries make it to page one: Honey and Chocolate, Simply Seafoam, She Is Beautiful.  Awesome! We are honored that our new butter yellow freshwater pearl bunny rabbit bracelet was featured in the Honey and Chocolate treasury.

This was a golden opportunity to meet some new Georgia friends online and help to promote each other.  I hope this will be an activity that we can continue in the future and bring more views and sales to all the wonderful artisans on the team. 

Due to the Georgia Blitz and the start of spring, Rabbittude has been included in a baker’s dozen of treasuries during the past day,  the Honey and Chocolate listed above and these other lovely treasuries:

We are honored to have been included. Click on them and enjoy not only Rabbittude, but all the other wonderful Etsy artisans this spring.