500 Sales, YAY!!!!!!

Just want to gloat.... Our shop went over 500 sales last night!!!

It's been long, it's be hard but I'm pretty psyched!!!!!

By the way if you happen to read this we are doing $5 off any sale of $10 or more the rest of the day!!!

Southwest Egg Rolls on the Fly

I'm mostly blogging this so I don't forget the recipe, better write it down while it's fresh in my head! I'm pretty proud of myself, I just made absolutely excellent Southwest Egg Rolls with no recipe, Rice, or Cheese. I'm creative though so I pulled an idea out of my you know where.



Went to the produce stand and got:
2 Roma Tomatoes
1 Bunch of Cilantro
1 Small Jalapeno
1 Red Onion (flat the better, it means they'll be sweeter)

Already had:
2 pckgs of Frozen Egg Roll wraps (got at ESH's months ago)
2 Chicken Breasts
7 Cloves of Garlic

Now what to do about rice and cheese? Well I didn't have either soooooo I may have used a box of Four Cheese Rice A Roni. Hey kill two birds with one stone, right?

So here's what you do:

~Put a few pats of unsalted butter in a small frying pan and let em' melt
~Lay your chicken breasts on it and turn the heat to medium
~As you breasts are cooking you can mince a few cloves of garlic, a few tbsp of red onion, mince a pinky fingers worth of jalapeno and shred a bunch of cilantro in there. This will allow these elements to cook a little and give the chicken a nice flavor.
~While all this is going on chop up your tomatoes and a bit more of all of your veggies and leave it in a bowl.
~Meanwhile you should be cooking your Rice A Roni or whatever rice you like
~Once your chicken is done take them out and lay them on a plate to rest for a few minutes, this will lock in the juices.
~Throw all your fresh veggies in with your nice cooked ones in the pan and mix them around.
~Once your chicken is cooled a little shred it into the pan and mix everything up

Now that your ingredients are done:

~Lay your wrap out in a diamond, so there's a point facing you.
~In the bottom third lay a small layer of rice
~Then a small handful of your chicken/veggie mix
~Fold the bottom third away from you
~Fold the left and right in to the center so they touch (or at least get close)
~Continue to roll
~Seal the tip with a little water and flour mix or egg yolk
~Fry the babies in a good amount of whatever oil you prefer (olive oil probably not tasty with this, but peanut or sunflower totally) for about 5 minutes or until the outside is golden brown and blistering.
~Finish with a little cilantro then take pictures and make your friends jealous of how cool you are. :-)

www.twoindustriousferret.etsy.com

Enchanticals: Where Enchantment Abounds

So I'm super excited to present to you one of our coolest customers. As ya'll know I've been doing a series of features on our customers and the crafty awesome things they make. I was really excited about this one becuase it's not at all what you'd expect as the customer of a jewelry supplier. Enchanticals makes tiny whimsical miniatures and writes original stories to tell their tales. She took some tiny cup charms of ours and incorporated them into some really neat pieces.

So Here's Enchanticals and her whimsical miniatures, Enjoy!

"Enchanticals is where enchantment resides…along with fantasy, imagination, creativity, magic, mystery, and lore.

Enchantment is always afoot at Enchanticals because enchantment cannot be harnessed, has no rules, and is everywhere.

At Enchanticals you will find…All kinds of enchanted handmade one-of-a kind creations such as miniature wizard/witch/faerie hutches and other furniture, wizard and faerie miniature bottles of potions, elixirs, miniature crystal balls, enchanted magic orb wands, elemental bottles, enchanted wands, miniatures, fashion doll vanities and jewelry, and much more…

My handmade creations are made one at a time. I keep no written recipes for paint colors or directions on how I made a certain item. Plus, the majority of items on or in my creations are made with found objects. That is why they are truly unique and one-of-a-kind.They are infused and shaped by everything in life, my experiences and memories both past and present, and all which surrounds me: nature, music, art, what I love and my areas of study, books, quotes, my beliefs and inner dreams. My creations evolve as I work on them, taking shape even as I craft them.


1. Santa’s Whose Been Naughty and Whose Been Nice Enchanted Set ~ 1:12 Scale

“Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,

You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:…
…He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice…”

You and I know it’s true…we all do. But, you thought it only applied to children, didn’t you? Well, surprise, what we know applies to adults as well.

Every year before Christmas Santa reviews all of our thoughts, words, and deeds for the last twelve months of the year to decide whether we have been naughty or nice. If we have been naughty, our names go on Santa’s Bad List and, if we have been good, our names go on his “Good List”.

The Good List children and adults will receive a special and wonderful gift for Christmas. But, the Bad List people, young and old alike, will get what
they by their own choice, using their free will, gave out to others… their nasty deeds, mean thoughts, and insulting and cruel words during the past 12 months.

You see, Santa too has to follow Universal Law, as we all have to do. And, Universal Law says that w
hat you give out you get back in kind. In other words, “What goes around comes around”. That is why we are warned to be mindful of our thoughts, words, and deeds… at all times.

So, you folks on Santa’s Bad List, don’t blame Santa if you get something you yourself decided to give to yourself this Christmas due to your negative, cruel, selfish, and mean thoughts, words, and deeds this past year. Santa is just doing what he is told to do through the Laws of the Universe.

The good news is, if you messed up this year, you get another chance to get something really wonderful and special for Christmas next year. You do have, after all, free will, and you can use it to change your thoughts, words, and deeds… but, not for just one day, but all year long
.

2. Woodland Wizard Spellwork Ingredients Set ~ 1:12 Scale

The Woodland Wizard’s little cottage… was stuffy, dusty, and the air was stale, plus it was darker than normal. The winter had been unusually long, cold, and harsh. The wizard felt confined and unable to think.

What he needed was fresh air…lots of it. But, he had so much to do. He was behind in his Spellwork, updating his Grimoire, and making his tinctures, potions, and elixirs. His crystals needed cleaning and his crystal balls needed reenergizing too…

…Cleaning was out of the question. He had neither time nor inclination for that nonsense. He was, after all, a wizard.


He looked at his Spellwork “To Do” list, chose a few of the “priority spells”, gathered up the key ingredients needed, and put them on his wooden tray from the Propria Tree along with his directional fork made from Rorvar wood. He loved this tray. It had aged beautifully to a magenta color. He grab
bed his old worn favorite cup and a bottle of his favorite Hobbit Tea...

…So, with his overloaded tray from the Propria tree in his hands, the Woodland Wizard, walking slowly and struggling to keep the tray with all its contents on it steady, headed towards his front door.

He found it rather difficult to balance the tray and get the “blasted” door opened, especially since he had opened it but a few times during the winter months and now it was a bit stuck. He struggled with the tray as all its contents teetered and wobbled as he pulled at the door until it opened.

…The door sprang open at last and sunlight rushed into his small dusty and stale little cottage. The brightness blinded him for a bit, but the sunlight and fresh air filled his lungs, rushed to his head, and up and down his arms and legs. He felt revitalized and energized.

3. Bookworm Wizard Enchanted Cabinet ~1:12 Scale

“…The wizard who owned this cabinet was one of those wizards whose powers and abilities were; well, to be blunt, mediocre. Some of his powers were stronger than the others, but, overall, he was merely average. Plus, if one had to be blatantly honest, this wizard really found Wizardry a bit dull and boring. He craved real life, adventure, romance, and other things life had to offer.

When he was young and well into his young adulthood, this wizard spent many hours reading. In fact, he spent far more hours reading books than on practicing and learning his skills as a wizard. He had no desire to be the most powerful, the cleverest or the smartest wizard. He felt lucky to be mediocre.

By having to spend all those extra hours in the library to read and study Wizardry, when all the other wizard students were outside at concerts or playing games, he developed a passion for the written word…books. But, not wizardly books. When he should have been studying “The Wizards’ Book on Wizardly Secrets” and “Most Obscure Spells”, he, instead, was reading Shakespeare, poetry, ”Idylls of the King”, and any other book completely unrelated to Wizardry…

… One day, when he was in the library, his mentor, checking up on him, caught him by surprise by just “appearing out of nowhere and the young wizard had no time to hide the book he was reading, Macbeth. He was caught. His mentor was furious to the point that he almost turned the young wizard into a toad, but controlled himself. (Self discipline is a quality all wizards must develop.) Rather, he, with clenched teeth, told his young charge he was forbidden to read any book at the school that did not pertain to Wizardry.

And, to make certain his directive was carried out, he put a spell on all the non wizardry book in the library so that when that when his young charge tried to pick one up, it would simply float out of his hands and float away. He would be unable to grasp it, hold it, and thus, be unable to read it.

… an idea entered his head. He thought to himself, “I may be a mediocre wizard, but I am still a wizard with some powers and abilities.” He knew what he would do, he knew his intend, and he felt confident he could do it. He picked up his magic wand, concentrated on his intent until beads of perspiration formed on his brow, said some words non wizards cannot comprehend, closed his eyes, and with a wave of his wand, spoke aloud his wish and spell.

Slowly and hesitantly, he opened his eyes, and to his delight, he did it. His room was filled with tons and tons of books all piled one upon another, on chairs, and all over the floor. He created books, his books, and not one was about wizardry. So, he grabbed one from a nearby pile, jumped on his bed, pulled his knees up to his chest, and began to read, “It was the best of times…”
"

Address: Enchanticals.etsy.com

Name: Marsha J. West

Email: wabi-sabi118@sbcglobal.net

The Slow Descent Into Antiestablishmentarianism

I should not be surprised, and I do deserve this for assuming things but I'd like to tell you a little story...

Once upon a time there was something called the IRS, it was built off of a corrupt illegal idea that takes money they have no right too from people. People go along with this becuase it has our governments face on it and therefor it must be legitimate. We've been taught to pay our taxes and we'll get a nice little "refund" (of your own money I might add) come January-April (depending on how lazy you are).

I'm a good law abiding citizen who does my taxes every year, last year I was very excited, after I got married, to see a nice 2k check. Woohoo! In my naivety I assumed that this would be roughly the norm, we only made a few thousand more this year then last anyways (which by the way IS under what is considered the American poverty line).

Well turns out that Dear Sweet Obama put through a "making work pay" stimulus credit thingy ma doober back in March which caused our employers to stop withholding any federal tax. Great, right? You got more money on your check? Ya not great now when you do your taxes and your refund went from several thousand to (well for me) only a few meager dollars (I suppose I should be grateful , at least I don't owe). After reading more about this, apparently A LOT of people are now owing A LOT of money. Cute.

How dare I assume that I'll get my tax refund (which might I repeat again I believe is my money, I worked for...) back right? I just find the whole system very corrupt to begin with, but geez I don't want the damned IRS knocking on the door, so now I'm going to go submit my lousy taxes to the lousy government to get a lousy return which won't help me a lousy bit.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. The End.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiestablishmentarianism

Dare To Be Stupid!

"Dare to be stupid
Tell me, what did I say
Dare to be stupid
It's alright
Dare to be stupid
We can be stupid all night
Dare to be stupid
Come on, join the crowd
Dare to be stupid"

Ok, but I'm digressing before I've even begun (I'm on a Weird Al kick recently, can you tell?). What I WAS going to say is as follows...

As good Americans we've been taught to have a basic distrust of everyone and everything. We are cynical, skeptical, and worried about everything. We don't look homeless people in the eye when, we don't talk to our neighbors, we ignore the crazy lady at the grocery store. Why? I think we're afraid, of what... I'll be damned if I can tell ya.

On a whim we just decided to go down across town to a store, before we even got into it we walked past a couple of hippy kids with an adorable puppy. A few months ago I would have just kept walking, thought the puppy was cute, and been over it. This time I thought "heck with it" walked over said "hi" kneeled down and started cooing over their puppy. One thing led to another and Lacy started telling me about her life, how she's had to get ingenious and crafty to get through life, telling stories of truckers giving her sweatshirts with hundreds of dollars in the pocket and random people giving her food and clothes without her even asking, how she met her "man" and how much she loves him. Make a long story short by the end of this conversation I was starting to think legitimately "where there's a will there's a way." I've never really put any faith in that statement until recently but I'm beginning to embrace it. It was inspiring, if an 18yr old girl with nothing but a backpack can be totally fine venturing out by herself into the world and gigglingly happy about the little things I'm pretty sure I can be just fine. She said to me: "just keep being happy." I think I might just take her up on that.

Question what society tells you, just because it's what everyone else does, doesn't make it smart. They are just dumb scared humans going along with what they are told too. Be Bold, do what you believe. Give the homeless guy the $50 in you wallet (bet he needs it alot more then you), go have dinner with your neighbors (you might even like them), listen to the crazy lady at the grocery store's tin foil hat conspiracies (maybe you could learn something new). I bet you $20 you'll feel much more alive having done it.

Dare To Be Stupid!!!!!!!!

I Stumbled Upon the Motherload...

So every morning/afternoon, ok anytime, we walk past the "cabana" in the front of the RV park we are staying at I hear: "Good morning kids!" As I turn and look I see an elderly lady with short wavy white hair, wearing some cute sweatshirt ( yes cute, you know, the kind with puppies and what not) holding a little yellow mug with a smiley face on it. This is Elsie. Elsie sits out here all day talking with everyone who comes in and out of the park. There is an ever rotating cast of character sitting around enjoying the sun and each other's company, under said cabana.

One morning, we found ourselves sitting her, again, talking with Elsie, her husband, and another older gentleman (who's name I STILL can't remember) when they began they're regular questioning of how it is us "city kids" wound up in there park and how it is we can get away with not having jobs and aimlessly roaming the countryside. So again I began to explain to them that we sell beads online, and how paypal works, and that the internet is not the devil... at some point during this Stan (Elsie's husband) looks at the other guy and says: "Doesn't Jim have a whole trailer stuffed full of trade beads he bought like 20yrs ago?"

Make a long story short Stan wound up throwing us in his truck, driving us to "No Name St." to Jim's trailer. Sure enough there was a trailer overflowing into his yard with beads, jewelry, baskets, bones, antlers, dream-catchers, pogs and assorted another knick knacks to boot. My jaw almost dropped. I was like a kid in a candy shop squirreling through mountains of shiny objects. There is spools of copper chain, buckets of trade beads, strands and strands of beautiful sparkling glass, it was insane.

The moral of the story is, don't be afraid to talk to people, you never know what you'll find. :-)

Stay Tuned to our Etsy shop to get a load of some of these finds...

www.TwoIndustriousFerret.Etsy.com

In Pursuit of Myself: And So It Begins...

Day1-3: Well that was just unnecessary. It took us 3days to do what should be a 6hr drive. Las Vegas, NM is a hostile place... Santa Fe, NM is trying to hard and Albequerque would have been better if I could have gotten it's namesake by Weird Al to play...


Day 4-10: So we went exactly where everyone told us not too. The Mexican Border... Las Cienegas is what they call BLM land ( basically the government owns it and doesn't know what to do with it so you can go do pretty much whatever you darn please and no one will say anything). Las Cienegas is 30 miles from the Mexican border, and I've never felt safer. Go figure right? The place was CRAWLING with Border Patrol, and there's nothing but yuppy old people out there. Real scary huh? Actually you probably should be afraid of old yuppies, but that's a whole long hippy rant I'll save for later...


Day 11-12: Lake Patagonia is a &^&^&*^*, we left immediatley the next day and headed for Quartzsite, AZ on a whim not knowing what was here but keep hearing it was the RV motherland and that you can't truely appreciate this lifestyle without coming here. So we drove all day and into the night (which was cute since or tail lights were out) and pulled into Hi Jolly camping area not being able to see anything.

Day 13- Present: We woke up to see a field of RVs in the desert, which I somewhat suspected would be the case... so we go into town and this whole place is a GIANT flea market/jewelry show/merchandise mart of senior citizen filled wonderfulness.

We are staying in an Rv park in the middle of town with a cabana full of elderly people who are fascinated by us "city kids" (not sure where they get that from... probably becuase anyone under 30 here is a damn dirty hippy and where I do fancy myself a hippy I do not have dreadlocks and hemp pants, haha)

Anyways! That's the status update, not too exciting I know, be back with you when I have some decent stories to tell :-)

www.twoindustriousferret.etsy.com

Spotlight: A Rocker Chic Ferret!

As Some of you know I have been featuring Etsy Artisans who embody some of Two Industrious Ferrets values; such as recycled and new vintage Jewelry. As part of that I would like to present to you one of our coolest customers: HellKat Inc. She has combined some fabulous vintage pieces with stunning reclaimed material to create some exquisite rocker chick jewelry! Enjoy!



"HellKat Inc is jewelry and accessories with a rock-chic vibe. Heavy metal pieces combined with vintage and upcycled materials make this a truly unique line.

HellKat Inc was created to fill my own need for statement-making affordable jewelry. I love combining vintage with rock&roll to get perfectly tough yet feminine pieces.


One of my most popular creations is the Brushed Silver Finish Thick Chain Necklace. With its delicate gunmetal chain and fringes this necklace provides just the right amount of drama.



A perfect complement to the necklace is the Brushed Silver Finish Thick Chain Bracelet. The thick chain is flanked by fishbone-style gunmetal chain. This piece is dark, edgy, and bold.



My most sought
after limited edition piece is a one-of-a-kind cocktail ring. A big, blingy Swarovski Crystal button reclaimed and attached to an Antiqued Filigree Adjustable Ring Base by Two Industrious Ferrets. This sparkler is not for the faint of heart.





Check HellKat Inc out at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/hellkatinc