Tag: soap

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Floral Soaps

Three new floral scents for your pleasure: Midnight Jasmine, Fresh Cut Roses, and English Tea Rose.
Three new floral scents for your pleasure: Midnight Jasmine, Fresh Cut Roses, and English Tea Rose.
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Now, most people who know me personally would tell you that pretty floral scents aren’t my usual train of thought. I’m not what you’d call a girly girl and my preferences are to avoid overly sweet smells. I absolutely love our flowers out in the garden, have been inspired by many beautiful blooms, eventually took on that requested honeysuckle scent, and we have added many, many more real flowers to our green thumb experience. But to find me humming happily up to my elbows in all those long-awaited floral scents? Only if it’s something like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or hubby would be checking my temperature again. But that was before a really cool and creative lady lit a fire under me lately….

Honeysuckle has been a running favorite for us for quite a while but I kept receiving requests for other fun floral scents. They were added to our idea list for me to play with when I got some down time or enough requests for that one scent for there to be a real demand. And yes, we got some seriously off the wall ideas from customers in addition to the more normal thoughts. Roses have always been popular but creating the “perfect” rose scent is a true challenge. There are so many components that make up a rose scent and everyone perceives smell a little differently. I also had to decide between keeping it completely natural, trying to work with only essential or fragrance oils, or whether we wanted to completely create our own from scratch scent. This made the floral soaps a little daunting until the perfect project came along that allowed me to go wild with that floral wish list. I owe so many thanks to our little pink haired friend who keeps that fire lit under me!

English Tea Rose and Fresh Cut Roses soaps
English Tea Rose and Fresh Cut Roses soaps

After much researching, trial and error, laughter and frustration, we have started bringing out the results to share with everyone. Please welcome to the website the first three of the additions to our shop: English Tea Rose, Fresh Cut Roses, and Midnight Jasmine. Each of these whisks me away to the garden when I sniff them- the soap room smells like a wonderful wild garden in full bloom! These two rose fragrance oils were voted the most true-to-life in our researching and I’m still in love with how this version of them looks (pink circle and rustic cut white one above.) The Midnight Jasmine has a hint of dew winding thru the background of a not too sweet jasmine and lily fragrance blend. The off white round shape was fun for this one but I really wanted to add some color when I remade this so the next batch was a little different. I will have an updated picture for your viewing pleasure very soon in the catalog. What do you think of the newbies? We would love to hear your feedback and if you have more ideas for our list. These are being added to our catalog as I type but this first release is very limited. Please be patient if you miss these here on the site as I will have them restocked here and in the booth in time for Fenske’s Market September 7th. Preorders will reserve your bars as usual and you are not billed for them until they are ready to ship.

I must now get back to the soap room and get to work again. Please stay tuned for more pictures and updates as I play catch up here on the website!

Happy Washing!
Dorothy

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Shopping Area being updated

Dorothy’s been busy at work in the kitchen around us attending the Spring Crawfish Festival last weekend and a family emergency. We’ll be updating the shopping area of the website over this weekend with the new creations so that we can share with everyone. For a sneak peek at the new goodies and the glory of smelling everything in person, stop by and see us Friday thru Sunday at our booth! We’re located right inside Puffabelly’s Zydeco Corner with Angie’s Bits o Glass and it’s a great time for the whole family out there! We have the promised Honeysuckle soap for everyone along with a few happy surprises. Our outdoor enthusiasts, we have what you need before you go play in the woods. The Texas Suds with Shiner Beer soap ran out last weekend but we had her making more to feed our addiction. There will be plenty of the St Arnold version of our beer soap out there though so no one needs to pout, promise! Next week will bring new pics to the blog and a Mother’s Day deal for those who can’t make it out to the festival. So stick around here for some soaping excitement with Dorothy’s sarcastic humor and come play with us at the festival. Either way, we’re gonna have a lot of fun.

See you there!
The Minions

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Researching and Decisions

I must admit I’ve been a bit of a nerd lately burying myself into research and planning. A few conversations with some great people at Donna’s and the Klein festival sent my geekiness into overdrive and derailed my typing time. Between bouts at the computer, stirring at the cauldron, overheating my stick blender, or burying myself in books at my desk, I lost track of blog time and I truly apologize. Please forgive my research bug and laugh at me a bit. Mind if I share a little of my research notes with you though?

I learned about a new-to-me allergy that has slowed some of my soaping over the last few weeks. A nice lady came by the booth who had a family member diagnosed with a formaldehyde allergy and they shared with me what they have been dealing with. I personally knew of formaldehyde in the use of embalming, some uses in dissolving or extracting ingredients, and in some cosmetic uses but they shared with me how widely it was used in everything- supposedly even in foods. That freaked me out on a level that was hard to describe even to hubby. We use food grade oils and herbs in our soaps to avoid a lot of nasties and I had been assured by our suppliers that none of these kinds of chemicals had been near our ingredients but I felt a need to really double check a few of them. I just had to know for sure, you know? We work hard to make sure that our soaps are safe for the whole family and the idea of how much this family was going through weighed on me. I’ve gotten almost all of my questions answered so far from the suppliers so I hope to be able to give that family an update soon. I’m also happy to say that our ingredients, whether we grow them ourselves or get them from our suppliers, are safe. The health and safety of all of our families are still our biggest concern. (Although kids vote that the size of the soap bubbles is their biggest concern!) I also need to thank our wonderful suppliers again for their patience in answering all of my questions.

I also sat down and took a hard look at the summer soap lines and how to approach them. We have been working with a growing request for us to keep both the unscented pioneer and olive oil soaps in stock year round now and I’m pushing those up in the to-do list. By the end of the month, they will stay on the regular stock list in the catalog and be there year-round. We also have two more men’s soaps that should roll out around that time. If these two keep going as well as they have, they might make the regular list too! I’m also moving up a fun color project to this week or next so I can have more excuses to play in the kitchen and post pictures. Another batch of Honeysuckle is brewing along with more of the Raspberry & Chocolate. As most of these will be cold process projects, everyone will have to wait until around the end of April or beginning of May to get their slice to take home. I really truly love the results we get from cold process soaping but have to admit my long, agonizing wait each time is torture…..

I again apologize for the delay in posting. And, yes, getting me to sit still this morning did involve coffee and chocolate for those who wondered. I must now return to the kitchen. The stick blender is raring to go for the day and the soap pots are all waiting. Hope your day works out well for you and we will see you out and about this month! We will definitely be at the Crawfish Festival this month and I’ll get more info updated for you on all the dates and places. More posts to follow soon- especially since I’ve figured out my phone’s voice recorder for keeping my blog post notes. Hooray for technology!

Happy Washing!
Dorothy