ARRR! Shamble Ramble Shows It's Pirattitude At Market

Ahoy there me hearties! Thanks for putten inter port here at Shamble Ramble. If ye be worth yer salt then ye knows that yesterday be Talk Like A Pirate Day, ARRR!, but alas, all good things must meet their end, this holds especially true in the life of a Pirate. So all be it gone, we be wanten ter shair with ye how we celebrated talk like a Pirate Day.

For us Talk Like A Pirate Day was on a Sunday, which for us is market day. We set up at a local flea market every Sunday if we can. We decided to do some thing a little fun, so we decorated our booth with a pirate theme and held a giveaway.

I've got two boys who just love all things Pirate, so we have allot of pirate themed items around the house. For Tyler's birthday last year we we had a Pirate theme party so I had allot of Pirate decorations. We borrowed a really neat looking pirates chest from Korbin that he bargained for during a community yard sale. We filled it will pirate doubloons, gems, strings of pearls and Mardi Gras beads, a skull, some bones, a pirate flask, and a treasure map. We got allot of lookers stop at our booth from this alone. Being that we were set up at a flea market we included a sign that said our chest and booty was not for sale... sorry I just couldn't resist a pirate pun.  We decorated our tent with pirate pen-nits, pirate flags and large treasure maps, and signs that invited every one to come by and celebrate talk like a pirate day with us.

For our give away we offered three of our pirate themed necklaces. One we like to call captain jack, a pair of wire and seed bead wrapped antique pirate keys and a seed beaded skull and crossbones cameo necklace. It was free to enter our giveaway, we had the participants fill out a slip with their name and a phone number or email so we could contact them later and get a mailing address. The names were drawn after we left market for the day and we called the 3 winners later that day.

We also sold some pirate related items at our booth, left over party decorations. I put together some goodie bags of pirate toys and swords for the kids and sold these at $3 a peace. We also had 3 different styles of pirate bandannas for $1 ea. and make your own treasure maps, the buyer got a large sheet of pirate themed stickers and a blank pirate map to put them on. These were a big hit at our son's birthday party with the kids.

We all dressed up in costume too, this is Stacey in her wench costume showing off her pirattitude. She turned allot of heads walking around the market.

Even my kids participated. We helped Tyler the night before cut up an old black T-shirt for his costume, which he paired with some stripped paints he had from a previous years Halloween costume.

We were so happy with how this all turned out, the day was allot of fun for our whole family and for every one at the market who participated in our drawing. We met some old friends who also love Pirates and Renaissance, and some new friends who share the same interests with us in jewelry making and crafts. That is probably for me one of the best things about setting up at market every Sunday. Were getting to know other vendors on a regular basis, as well as the market crowd and making new acquaintances every time we go.

It's also a great experience for the kids when they come, we don't bring them every time, but it's a great activity for them when they do. They get some fresh air on beautiful days, they get to walk around the grove with us as we take turns away from the booth and learn how to bargain hunt and make a deal when they spend their money there. Korbin loves antiques, I often have to bite my tongue when he wants to buy some one's old mug or glass or some other thing, I feel we don't need, but he sees value in it. He says he wants to be one of those people on antique rode show or antique hunters when he grows up. They also get a little bit of business experience as they help us out around the booth, setting up or taking down the tent, helping us through out the day, learning to give change to customers and picking up trash when we are finished for the day. I'm glad I have the opportunity to share this with my family and for them to be apart of my passion for crafting.

Thanks for reading, and please tell us how you celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day this year or any other year!

Nicole



Caring for a Baby Bird Day 2 Update

I wanted to post an update to the Weekend of Nature and Babies post I did earlier this week. If you read it then you know we are now caring for a stranded baby bird. He is starting to grow on me I think. I never was a bird person, I know friends who own birds as pets.  Their hands or arms are always covered in scratch or bite marks, some very deep and I often wondered what kind of person would put up with that? Why would you go through all that to keep birds? It must take a truly special personality to keep and care for a pet bird and love them as much as we love our cats and dogs.

This little bundle of fluff is very cute, and surprisingly trusting. He doesn't try to bite or peck at us at all. He is very calm around us and not afraid like I would have thought he would be. He is very gentle and, I'm starting to notice, smart. He knows what he wants and doesn't want, for instance today when offered the choice between bird seed or a dropper of baby food, he has been choosing the seed. Today is the first time I've introduced seeds to his diet, when he opens his mouth I would drop one in by hand, then offer the dropper of baby food or water to wash it down. He got the hang of it and then started refusing the dropper, but when I hovered by hand above his head he would open wide. Show him the dropper and he would close his mouth tight, show him my hand and again he opened wide. I'm completely amazed by this, I wouldn't have thought birds, especially baby ones, would be that intelligent.

Every day he eats a variety of baby food, apple & blueberry, pears & raspberries, apple & cherry, turkey & rice, a vegetable mix, oatmeal and more. We offer him a different flavor every feeding, which right now is every half hour to 45 min. I tell you it's like having a baby all over again. Round the clock feedings, little jars of baby food all throughout the fridge. We even have to heat the jars in a shallow pot of water on the stove to make it room temperature before feeding, reminds me of warming glass baby bottles when my kids were small. This experience has certainly been nostalgic if nothing else.

He is also hopping out of his nest and getting around the pen. Yesterday we took the lid off and had his pen sitting on the picnic table on the back porch so he could hear other birds and get some fresh air and sun. He sat up in his nest and started grooming himself and stretching his wings. It was so cute, I took a dozen photos, but posted some of the best. He was very active at that moment, and this morning was standing on the edge of his nest to make him self taller, so that the food would reach his mouth faster I guess. Hopefully he should be able to go it on his own soon. I'm waiting to see more signs of wing flapping and try to get him to take the seed from a small dish in his pen first.

I also have an update on the baby chipmunks found at the baby shower last weekend. They did go home with a family at the party. They have named them Alvin and Theodore and are feeding them milk formula by bottle. My husband works with the mom of the family that took them home so I will try to get more updates from time to time if I can.

Thank you all for stopping by.

Nicole