Gobble gobble gobble . . .
Woo hoo – it’s almost Turkey Day! Any holiday that centers around eating is great in my book. So in honor of the impending holiday, a turkey tribute:
Turkey Soap Party Favors by SpecialtySoapSh
Good for washing away the guilt of eating 80,000 calories in one meal.
Turkey Leg Baby Rattle by MayaBella
Great for keeping the little ones busy while you’re mashing the potatoes.
Walkers Roast Turkey with Paxo Sage & Onion Flavour Crisps
Arrgh, why do the Brits get all the best flavored chips? Seriously, they’ve got Prawn Cocktail chips, Pickled Onion chips, Worcester Sauce chips, and now this? What could be better than turkey and gravy in the form of a light potato crisp?
Come on baby light my Artfire . . .
Here’s the shameless self-promotion of the day – I just opened a shop on the new up-and-coming handmade goods website Artfire! My Etsy shop is still going strong, of course, but I’m excited by a lot of the new features that Artfire has, and will slowly be adding new items to my shop there! Click here to ch-ch-check it out!
The new Artfire shop!
The oldie (but still goodie) Etsy shop!
Sour and sweet
Maybe I’m inspired by my blog’s name, or maybe by the completely strange and fascinating Pickle Soap that I featured in a previous post, but I’m all about pickles right now. My blog name, by the way, popped into my head after my husband and I ordered BBQ for takeout the other night, and when we opened the delivery containers we realized they had forgotten to send us sweet pickles, and instead sent us a double portion of dill pickles. Actually, they also forgot to send almost all the meat in our order, but that’s another story (beware Hill Country BBQ delivery). Anyhow, I love all kinds of pickles, so the double order of sour pickles was definitely not a tragedy.
A quick search of Etsy for pickle products revealed a crazy plethora of items - felted pickles, clay pickles, magnet pickles, pickle photography, angry pickles. Even real pickles! Deeeelish.
Pickle Cat Toy, Kosher Dill Size, by Casbahkitten
Atomically Hot Garlic Dill Pickles by Sardineandnchovy
Angry Pickle Magnet or Brooch by Bittersweets
The Holiday Handmade Cavalcade is coming!
In a little more than two weeks, the fabulous {New New} York Etsy Street team – of which I am a member ; ) -is setting up shop in the famous music venue The Knitting Factory and throwing the first annual Holiday Handmade Cavalcade! From our very own {New New} press release:
“A spunky newcomer to the indie shopping scene, the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade is a one day event showcasing more than 30 locally grown purveyors of handcrafted soaps, housewares, ceramics, paper goods, jewelry, accessories, clothing, and original artwork for the shopper looking to support local craft in addition to filling up their holiday stockings.”
It’s going to be an amazing event, with festive cocktails, awesome vendors, coupons given out to early-bird shoppers, and fabulous raffle giveaways!! If you’re in the NYC area and are itching to do some holiday shopping, the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade is your spot!
The Holiday Handmade Cavalcade 2008!
If you’re hungry AND dirty, I would probably just stick with this . . .
DirtyAssSoap's Super Bacon Cheeseburger Soap with Fries and Pickles
Thankfully, it doesn’t actually smell like a cheeseburger.
Smells good enough . . . to shower with?
Ok, so my interest in licorice scented bath and beauty products has turned into a full-blown obsession with weirdly scented, food inspired soaps. Here are a few more weird and wonderful soaps from my fellow Etsy sellers MollycoddleSoap, amandalouise, and DirtySanchez (who just might have some of the funniest descriptions on all of Etsy). Oh yeah, and one more irresistable-sounding soap from Savor. Yum!
Another licorice soap, this one by amandalouise
Dammit Soap by Dirty Sanchez - scented with gingerbread and brown sugar, yum
Polenta Soap by Savor
And last but certainly not least, In a Pickle Soap by Mollycoddle Soap. It's even has a pickle scent!!! Must. Have. This. Soap.
give me the black jellybeans
Black licorice. It’s one of those things you either love or hate. I happen to love it, especially really great old-school licorice like you can get in Europe – a little sweet, a little bitter, a little salty, and altogether pretty enticing. So imagine how excited I was to find out, during one of my extensive searches of bath products on Etsy, that licorice is not just for eating – it’s for soap and lip balm too! These products, from awesome Etsy sellers Savor and Bathlilfe, are both on my rapidly growing Christmas list - I just can’t wait to try them. There’s something about black soap and lip balm that’s alluring and kinda mysterious – just like a great piece of black licorice.
Savor's Little Black Dress Olive Oil Soap
Bathlife's Black Licorice Creamy Shea Butter Lip Balm
anybody want some eggnog?
“Holiday jewelry”. I mean, just the sound of that makes me picture my eighth grade self walking around wearing a puffy paint printed poinsettia sweatshirt with matching headband and large plastic mistletoe earrings. But I feel like now it’s kinda cool to show off a little bit of the holiday spirit – you know, the “I’m feeling a little festive, let’s light a pine scented candle and add a spash of bourbon to the egg nog” kind of holiday spirit. So here are a few pretties from my Etsy shop. In the spirit of, well, subtle holiday-spiritness. Trust me, you won’t end up looking like the crazy lady wearing the felted Christmas tree sweater.
All I want for Christmas is . . .
All I want for Christmas is the aforementioned Ranch Cheetos and also these:
Okay, and some lip gloss, and also a flat screen TV. But you get my drift.
cheesy puffs
New York City is a fantastic place. It’s the kind of place where a person can leave their apartment at ten o’clock on a Monday night and obtain a slice of pizza, a bottle of rose, and a box of red henna, and be back on the couch watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations within ten minutes. Living in New York, however, means you have to accept that there are certain things that are harder, if not impossible to obtain. Like toilet paper in those super-large bulk packs, or Mr. and Mrs. T’s Bloody Mary mix in the hefty-sized jugs with the pour-handles, or Chik-fil-a, or Patio Enchilada Dinners. But the most egregious of all these Big-City omissions is the insanely paltry variety of snack foods. Now don’t get me wrong, NYC the most fantastic city in the world for finding whatever you love when it comes to food, but what I’m talking about here is good old-fashioned chips, cheesy puffs, and corn chips in all the varieties that our suburban neighbors are lucky enough to enjoy.
Let me give you an example. In March, I flew to LA for my friend Matthew’s birthday. Within twenty minutes of de-planing, I had obtained a pirate’s booty worth of snacks: Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Limon, a special edition bag of Cheetos Enchilada flavor snacks (!), and a bag of Combos Egg, Bacon and Cheese flavored snacks *. I mean come on! Until recently, in New York I couldn’t even find a bag of the regular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and I emailed Frito Lay to see if I could order a case, which they denied. I also emailed them to see what ever happened to the Ranch Flavored Combos that I remember from my youth, and they told me they never existed**. So it was a double whammy.
So here’s my point: I never get any of the really cool flavors of snack foods. At least not before people in Scranton and Boise and Topeka get to try them. And if you had just found out that Ranch Flavored Cheetos actually EXIST, you would want to get your hands on them ASAP, right?! Here’s the proof:
Who doesn’t want to try these!?! Seriously, what could be better than ranch and Cheetos!
* if you ever see these, back away slowly. I am not kidding, I like some pretty weird stuff, but “egg” flavor totally has no place in a snack food.
** they DID exist, right!!?! I mean, I couldn’t have totally made this flavor up! They were completely insane!
