Too Many Eggs, Too much snow and cold, and lots of etsy orders!

We celebrated "no more jury duty" our first weekend off after it was done.

The first day, I stayed in my pajamas until well after noon.  Skott made me pancakes for breakfast.  It felt wonderful!

The next day we went to  Paul and Jen's for dinner.  Of course, (as usual) waaaayyy too much good food!  And lots of fun and laughs.

Poor Jen.  I forgot to warn her to NEVER EVER make deviled eggs for my husband.

This plate WAS full. (It was a delicious recipe -Buffalo Blue Cheese Deviled Eggs).  For four people, that was a lot of egg!

Skott and Bella

 We got hit with a crazy cold snap. Then a few days of freezing rain.  Followed by slushy rain, followed by snow.  It was bizarre.  10 minutes outside town they had 6+ inches of snow.  Very unusual for the coast! For the first time in over a year, I had to dig out my scarf.  Here we are, heading to work on night:

We managed to sneak in a few walks on the beach:

Came across this neat log one day:

We've been super busy with etsy orders, both beachwalkerz and BotanicalSweets.  We are also busy trying to get the logistics of the caramels going so we can sell at farmers markets this summer.  What a nightmare!  Between insurances, inspections, more inspections, different insurances, ODA inspections....  GAH!  It's enough to make me throw up my hands and quit some days. But, we have all that behind us now, and we have entered into the bureaucratic nightmare of filling out applications to be vendors at various markets.  We have a main plan, but no guarantee of getting into the markets we want, so we are also filling out apps for back-up plans, just in case.
On top of that, we are testing out various equipments, labels, bags, etc and trying to get everything streamlined and perfected.  Finding out a lot of things that don't work, and realizing that the learning curve we're on is a very winding, loooooong curve....
We were invited to our first event -a Jane Austen faire in Salem.  Last year the one-day event was such a smashing hit that they extended it to a two-day event for this year.  We will be sharing a table with Paul and Jen so if nothing else, good times will be had!
We are also trying to branch out and do some wholesaling and/or consignment to local coffee shops, gift shops, etc.  It is REALLY hard to put yourself out there when there is so much unknown.  You want to appear professional and have your price sheets, samples, brochures, etc all ready to go, but yet not knowing what exactly you should have written...  I know I stress a lot over things like this but I want to make sure we are doing this right.  This is our ticket out of the casino.
And I want OUT.
BAD.

beachwalkerz has been steady since about Thanksgiving.  Of course, the one thing I despise making the most, is the one thing that gets ordered the most lately

wire holders

 They aren't exactly difficult or time-consuming. They're just not a creative outlet.  They're boring and repetitive.
But hey, they sell.  And every sale contributes to our Wisconsin vacation fund this year!
We have also started selling more of the big lots of driftwood wedding placecard holders or table number holders.  Here's one of our latest orders:

www.etsy.com/shop/beachwalkerz

This was a fun order -we had artistic freedom to chose whatever pieces we want.  Normally, people have a specific shape in mind, or they want them all to be similar, etc.  This individual wanted us to find as unique of pieces as possible.  Yay!  Our favorite kind of order!

Yesterday we ran to Newport to get supplies.  This is us, a little rain-soaked, headed to brunch: