Oh, how embarrassing!

I have Google Analytics on my website, which helps me track how many hits my website gets each day. I didn't hit my site yesterday, nor did I have any maintenance to do on it. When I checked my Analytics this morning, I was shocked to see that my site had no hits yesterday! This never happens! I was checking on something for a local phone customer/friend on my website this afternoon, only to discover that an element had crashed, bringing the whole site down with it! Ack! Usually, website maintenance takes a few hours - 3 hours and 55 minutes to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it (with a combination of the Zen Cart FAQs section, the ZC forums and my ZC manual) - then 5 minutes to fix it and check it. I was tired this afternoon and really didn't want to deal with it while my daughter was napping; I wanted to take advantage of the quiet and the grey, cold, rainy day. However, as soon as I woke up, I tackled the issue and was pleasantly surprised that the whole fix only took about ten or fifteen minutes. I'm happy to say that the website is completely fixed and back to being operational.

In another embarrassing moment, I was getting an order ready for a customer and discovered I'm out of Black Cat (Perfect Pumpkin scent) soaps. So, I'm calling these "out of stock," but if your heart is set on this soap, it doesn't take long to make it.



To my loyal customers and site visitors, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. All is not lost, and there's still two days left to get orders in for Christmas delivery.

Need a Coffee Break?

Last month, I got this wild idea to make coffee cup soaps and coffee cake soaps. I would package them together and call it a "Coffee Break." It was something of an adventure, because the idea included actually moulding the CP soap in coffee cups. When moulding CP soaps, it really helps to use something flexible or something out of which the soap will come easily. Usually I use slab or box moulds - lined - and I can pull the soap out by the liner. I didn't want those odd lines in my soaps, so I didn't line the cups. Instead, I greased them heavily with Vaseline (soapmakers' trick) and then poured the soap in.

The soap is a delight. I used coffee in the water phase and a yummy Coffee Bean FO for the scent. It's a great wake-up, and the soap itself is very moisturizing and skin-nourishing. I finally got the soaps out of the cups this week. They're a bit soft, but I'm confident they'll harden up nicely.



Well, you can't very well have coffee without coffee cake, right? I made the coffee cake soap a few weeks ago and scented it with Cinnamon Coffee Cake fragrance. It really does smell good enough to eat. Here's what that soap looks like...




It'll be a week-and-a-half before I even think about packaging these, as I want to give the soaps the maximum amount of time to cure before I get them ready to sell. The price will be dependent on the final weight of the soaps, but figure that each coffee cup yields two bars, and each set will come with two bars of the coffee cake soap, so that's like getting 4 bars of soap in each set. These will make great gifts for the coffee lovers on your list!