Growing Pains

Almost two whole month have past since I updated HSVH last. My blogging time has fallen victim to Tattooedgeek Inc., which by the way I'm pleased to report has been doing well.  My sales are increasing, especially wholesales orders.  I've had the pleasure of working on several sets of wedding favors including my favorite, the Sugar Skull Lip Balm favors pictured below. 

I was asked to create a custom aftercare kit for a local tattoo parlour. The kits include a 2oz cruelty free rosemary and lavender glycerin soap.  Rosemary essential oil is excellent for minor skin abrasions, it helps stimulate healing.  Lavender essential oil is a natural antiseptic.  I've been told that over 50 of the kits have already  sold.

My daughters and I were able to vend in Brooklyn on May 1st & 2nd as part of the Brooklyn Lyceum's Spring Food and Craft Market. We brought my new line of 3.5 inch pocket mirrors to the Market.  I brought 27 mirrors and came home with just two.  The mirrors will make their shop debut sometime this week. 

I love vending in Brooklyn, it's always a great experience.  Not only was the Spring Food & Craft Market fun, but I also got to meet customer/fellow etsyian and vendor Darlene from Ursula and Olive ( http://www.ursulaandolive.com/, http://www.ursulaandolive.etsy.com/.)

Just as their banner promises, Ursula and Olive offers up really fun and bold  geeky goodness in the form of necklace pendant combos, earrings and a few other awesome products, all extreamly well crafted.  We brought home one of Ursula and Olive's Mr. Spock necklaces, next time I'm getting the "Snape is sexy" pendant. (And now you know where the geek in Tattooegeek comes from.)

Food has been another causality of Tattooedgeek's recent growth spurt. There has been many a 9:00p.m. microwaved Amy's burritos as of late (we like the breakfast ones, they're vegan and really good.)  Michael's birthday provided a much needed respite from all of the frozen vegan food.  I put aside work and made Lemon Pepper Seitan Medallions with steamed string beans and a wild rice blend.  I formed the Seitan as if I was making sausages to get the medallion shape.  I dredged the medallions in organic corn starch then fried them until golden and crispy.  I then smothered the medallions in the Lemon Pepper sauce.

Not being much of a cake person myself, I opted to make super chocolaty cupcakes. Nobody complained!

I really need to figure out how to manage my time better.  One decent cooked meal a month is completely unacceptable.   Any suggestions?  How do you handle family, work, food, homework, cleaning etc....

Whole Lotta Snow

Seems like New York  has received an entire winters worth of snow in the last 2 weeks.  I usually don't mind snow. That is until it delays UPS  from delivering my supplies, then I hate it.  Since  the snow has delayed several  deliveries we are no longer friends, the snow and I. Friendship with UPS is on shaky grounds as well. The only thing Brown can do for me lately is piss me off.   

The kids love the snow and wholeheartedly welcomed all of it.  They celebrated the new snowfall by burying each other in it.  And, trying to make the worlds largest snowball.  

Work on the worlds biggest snowball is still incomplete.  With the help of google we found out that the largest snowball is 21 feet, needless to say - the kids have along way to go to beat that record.  Yesterday's 8 inches of new snowfall  should come in handy.

The rest of us welcomed all the snow by watching Dead Snow. 

Dead Snow is the 2009 Norwegian Nazi Zombie movie.  The movie has English subtitles.  The story  is quick but very predictable. There are a few really great scenes.  Bottom line; if you like Zombies, intestines, Zombie Nazis, snow, blood and complete silliness (which we do!), then you'll enjoy Dead Snow.   While Michael (my other half) wasn't impressed,  the rest of us enjoyed every minute of it.  Dead Snow will not be showing up at the top of any of my Zombie movie lists, however 3 out of 4 of us do highly recommend it.  Wanna know what is at the top of my Zombie movie list? Right now:

The list is growing and always changing, so no complaints please - besides these are only my 3 favorites. I know Zombie purest will argue that 28 Weeks Later isn't really a Zombie movie, and I'd have to agree for the most part. I too would  rather my Zombies  rise from the dead  than be infected with the Monkey Rage Virus.  But I like 28 Week Later anyway, Monkey Rage and all. 

***Right now you can get Shaun Of  The Dead for $5.00 at Target.  

Even though I'm busy working on some really fun Valentines Day products I'm still having trouble saying good bye to the ones I designed this past Christmas.  November and December the Tattooedgeek family was hit with a steamroller of a flu.  The germ incubator that is our second grader brought it home.  And with stealth precision it effectively knocked all 7 of us for a loop.  Being sick during a candle & gift company's busiest time of the year really sucked!  The flu robbed me of the opportunity to properly promote the candles I had designed for the '09 Holiday Season. Two designs never even made it to production.  In the interest of closure I am  finally saying goodbye to my holiday friends.  It is time to move on.  I must pack you all into boxes and shove your images into the dusty back corners of my hard drive.

So long my lovelies you were fun to work with!

Vegan Mofo day8 Vegan Shrimp Fra Diavolo

17 years ago, before we both became completely vegetarian, my husband was a shrimp and fish fan.  Me, not so much. When we stumbled upon vegan shrimp ~ boy was he excited to make Shrimp Fra Diavolo.  His Fra Diavolo sauce is always excellent. The vegan shrimp is a bit fickle, drop it in the Fra Diavolo sauce and it was really good.  But saute it Scampi style in garlic, 2 tbs of earth balance, lemon juice, white wine and fresh parsley and the vegan shrimp became very rubbery. In our opinion Vegan Shrimp, Fra Diavolo = good, Scampi = not so good.

This is what my kids do while I work

The scariest thing about these pictures is that this is only 8 of 104 they actually took.

VeganMoFo Day 6 ~ OUR BIG FAT VEGAN WEDDING

This past July our dear friends Michael Thomas and Lindsay were married.  Being devout vegans they set out to plan an event that was both beautiful and completely devoid of all animal products.  They did an amazing job.  I asked Michael Thomas to guest blog about the experience of planning his vegan wedding. 

OUR BIG FAT VEGAN WEDDING

Lindsay and I were engaged on June 16, 2008 on the cliff walk in Newport, RI.

Being the OCD pair we are, we began the planning process in our hotel as soon as we returned from our long walk.

We went through everything one detail at a time.

Would it be a big wedding or a small wedding?

Small. Check.

Where would we do it? Rhode Island? Boston? Long Island?

Long Island. Check.

How much did we want to spend?

$5,000.00…yeah, right. No dice.

What type of food would we offer?

Seeing as we are both vegan, that was a no brainer. The Omnis would have to withstand the torture of an event that not only was free of alcohol, but there would be no cruelty on the menu either.

OK done and done right? WRONG. How were we going to pull this one off?

We spent ample time searching out venues and caterers to no avail. Most of the places on Long Island are the “wedding factory” types, and our tiny little 50 person guest list was looked down on with contempt with a sloppy side order of GRILLED VEGETABLES to go along with it. “Wait…no eggs? No buttah? No cheese?” It was a painful experience.

Not exactly what we were thinking. Were we really going to be able to do this the right way?

One day, quite by accident, I ran across a website for a company called Elegant Affairs Catering. We called them up and spoke to Brooke who was happy to hear what we had to say, so we set up a meeting. As luck would have it, Elegant Affairs uses the Nassau County Museum of Art as a venue. When we pulled up to the museum for our meeting we were pleasantly surprised with our surroundings. To make things even better, Brooke was as sweet and understanding as could be and worked very closely with us to come up with a delicious menu that anyone attending was sure to enjoy. Another stroke of luck was that Elegant Affairs already had experience with vegan events and had just put together a vegan menu for another wedding, much larger than ours mind you. Of course we made sure they were mindful of those sneaky ingredients like casein etc….

After we went over our options, Brooke gave us the tour of the grounds, showing us where we would have the ceremony. Their formal gardens are beautiful and when Lindsay saw the gazebo area where the ceremony would be, the tears started flowing. This was the place for sure. So I wrote the check for the deposit and we continued our planning.

Next would be the cake. I already knew that Vegan Treats in PA made awesome Vegan Wedding cakes, but I wanted to stay local so the search was on. After a few frustrating calls to people claiming to do Vegan cakes we found Madame Butterfly in Babylon Village. After communicating back and forth for quite some time we met with the owner and we hit it off instantly. She made a plethora of samples for us which we happily devoured. We decided on a 3 tier cake, square tiers with different flavors of cake and filling for each tier. The design would be an Asian motif based loosely around our invitation, complete with edible flowers , bamboo and Koi fish.

Fast forward to July 19th, 2009, the day of our wedding. The menu consisted of passed hours devours of edamame cups, Greek salad cups, black bean quesadillas and California rolls…the buffet consisted of roasted peppers stuffed with quinoa and….tofu squares in fillo dough with a sweet eggplant topping, salad, pasta with olive oil and lemon with basil and sun dried tomatoes…..all vegan , all delicious. The cake was a huge hit with everyone as well.

The moral of the story is, don’t compromise your beliefs. You can stick to your guns and still keep everyone happy and satisfied.

Vegan MoFo 2009 day 2 ~ Chocolate Chip Crumb Cake ~

This vegan chocolate chip crumb cake is a variation of Isa Chandar Moskowitz East Coast Coffee Cake from Vegan Brunch.  Vegan Brunch has quickly become one of my all time favorite cook books.  So far everything we've tried  has been LOVED! For my chocolate crumb version I doubled the the cake recipe and added 1 cup natural unsweetened baking cocoa and 1 cup of choclate chips to the crumb topping.  I sprinkled Hain organic powdered sugar all over it once it  cooled. 

The kids thought the chocolate crumb was a bit bitter without the powdered sugar.  I thought it was fine either way.  I doubled the cake part of the recipe because after making it once before we all decided that the cake was so good that we wanted more of it.

Lately my Bay Rum soy candle has gotten lots of attention.  The last two weeks it has made it to Etsy's front page 3 times.  I'm thrilled with all of the love the candle has been receiving but we have dozens of others that are deserving of lots of love as well.  With Halloween coming I thought I'd highlight a few of my "darker" candles.  First up is:

Man Eater is a complex blend of sensual amber, lotus blossom, and sweet jasmine accented with tangy orange and delicate orchids. This candle is black in color and topped off with a dazzling glittery splash of color.  Man Eater is available in 6oz tin, 2oz tin and Shea Butter Solid Fragrance balm. 

http://www.mrstattooegeek.etsy.com/

Check Out September's Little Black Box.

Tattooedgeek Inc. Soy Candles will be included in Septembers Little Black Box. Dozens of various 1oz tins were sent out. We are so happy to be included along side so many talented crafters! Pick up a Little Black Box for yourself. http://thelittleblackboxes.com