Glam on the Run

The call came yesterday from my dearest online friend.  Although we'd been friends for over 6 years and live just 4 hours or so apart, our friendship had been restricted to emails, chats, text messages and phone calls.  He told me he had a business day trip to make to a city near us and could we meet for lunch.  With less than 24 hours' notice, I had to arrange for child care, figure out where we could meet for lunch and get as glammed as possible (being just friends doesn't make me less of a "girl").

First step...  Figure out the outfit.  Although it's late October, I'm still not ready to give up my sandals, so whatever I wore had to work with open-toe shoes.  My first outfit was going to be a white t-shirt and my favorite brown and white zebra-print skirt with my oh-so-sexy (and surprisingly comfortable) espadrilles.  However, I couldn't find the skirt and didn't want to take the time to tear our bedroom up looking for it, so I went for outfit #2 - hot pink long-sleeved t-shirt, black and hot pink skirt and black strappy heels.

Step two has to be the toes and feet - starting from the bottom here.  I last gave myself a pedicure ten days ago using some of my favorite colors from Sally's Beauty Supply.  These enamels are a bit more expensive, but my polish jobs last forever!  This pedicure started with China Glaze Base Coat, followed by two coats of Ultra Pro nail enamel in Hawaiian Flower, then a layer of OPI white shatter and all that topped off with China Glaze Top Coat.  My tootsies still look freshly pedicured and nice.

But then I looked at the bottoms of my feet, and they looked anything BUT sandal-ready!  Normally I'd soak my feet in a bubbling foot spa with some tea tree and lavender oil, then apply a moisturizer and wear white cotton socks to warm it and allow it to work in over the course of several hours.  There simply wasn't time for the foot soak, and I completely forgot about moisturizing with socks.  Oh, dear!  I happened to have a jar of body scrub in the bathroom that I'd made for my husband.  Whew!  Saved!  A thorough scrub in my shower got all the dead skin off, and I gave them a quick rub with Rub Me Right... There (in Patchouli).  I stood on a towel while I put my makeup on to help the massage oil's delectable goodness soak into my feet (and to keep me from slipping, falling and busting my butt on the linoleum).

This third step I normally wouldn't do, but my friend Ginger posted a recipe on her FB page this week about  DIY homemade lip scrub, and for the past week or so, I've been wanting to whip some up.  My lips get sooo dry and scaly during the harsh Winter months, so I thought this would be the perfect treatment for them.  But, alas!  Here I was, wanting to scrub my lips and not having any lip scrub made up (and, I mean, seriously, it'd have taken all of five minutes to make).  Time for a quick exfoliation.  After I finished brushing my teeth, I used my toothbrush to gently scrub my lips and the surrounding skin.  Oh my gosh, that peppermint toothpaste made them tingle and flushed them a nice, natural pink!  I gave them a swipe of Vaseline and put my makeup on.

The rest of getting ready was nothing out of the ordinary - hair, makeup and outfit.  When it came time to moisturize my legs, I grabbed the tube of Moisture to Go I keep in my purse (currently in Verbena scent).  I was scrubbed, scented and moisturized, and every bit of me was first-meet-with-a-friend ready.

Of course, my friend never really saw my legs, and I seriously doubt he paid any attention to my feet (though he did peek at my pedi).  The scrubbed smooth lips felt good and made my lip gloss (decided to go with their natural pink from the scrub) last so much longer than usual.  This lip gloss was one I'd made, just playing around, with ginger and cinnamon essential oils.  It goes on hot and tingly, making my lips flushed and slightly swollen.  None of this primping was for my friend; every bit of it was for me and enabled me to approach this meeting with style and confidence.  This evening, though, I'm definitely going to throw together some lip scrub, and I think I'll give it some tingle with some peppermint essential oil.  This will be just right for Winter!

What quick beauty and primping tips do you have for those last minute glam needs?  Share them here.

Random Musings

Last week was crazy here, dear readers, which is why I'm so far behind on the weekly blog post.  My weeks lately (in addition to the typical homeschooling) have included running some test batches of soap for Nature's Garden, potty training and putting together a large order for Duplin Winery.  It's almost Autumn.  I was thinking earlier today how it is that so many of my fellow Indies have time to keep it current on Facebook, Twitter and the Indie Beauty Social Network.  In fact, I'm feeling left behind, because I barely have time to read posts, let alone post a whole lot.  Then it dawned on me.  IT'S FALL!  That means... SILLY SEASON!!!  And, absolutely, the silly season is upon me.  My stockists want their Holiday merchandise and I have my own shows for which to prepare.

I have several random thoughts to toss out there for this week's blog post.  I apologize if they don't seem very cohesive.

First there was the bottle of Christmas red acrylic paint that my toddler spilled all over the living room.  My living room looked like a crime scene.  No kidding!  One of my friends said that the chalk outline was the only thing missing.

Really, Officer, it's NOT blood!

The soaps I've been making to test the Nature's Garden fragrances will be offered for a limited time.  If certain soaps go really well, then I'll introduce them to my regular inventory.  There will only be 2-3 bars of each soap available, so quantities will be limited and likely to go fast.  There are some delicious fragrances in the bunch, but I think the most fascinating one I'll be calling "Fizzy"; it smells exactly like Dr. Pepper.  I could even smell the carbonation bite.  I made this one with French green clay.  There are also two new beer soaps - one for men, one for women - on the rack, as well as several others.

Fierce Beer Soap - One of the best men's fragrances EVER

Orange Chiffon Cake Soap Cupcakes - Smell divine!

Two shops here in Burgaw will be carrying my soaps by the end of September.  The Nifty Place will be selling a selection of all-natural soaps, as well as Sub-Lime Sandalwood beer soap (just for something for the fellas).  Courthouse Coffee will be selling the following soaps:  Green Tea, Coffee Mocha, Goat's Milk & Coffee and Fresh-Brewed Coffee.  I'm honored and privileged to be working with these two awesome small businesses!

Fresh-Brewed Coffee Soap - What a wake-up call!

I don't like loud dogs early in the morning.  I mean, does anyone, really?  Yet we have these neighbors who let their dog out every morning at 7:00, and this dog barks at anything and everything.  Of course, he often wakes my baby, too - sometimes before she has the first interest in waking up.  I know that's random; just tossing it out there.

Last Wednesday, my firstborn was telling me about her handbells practice at church.  She said, "Two kids were playing incessantly, even when Mr. Clif was talking.  They got their handbells taken away."  Yes, I'm darn proud of her for knowing how to use "incessantly" correctly.  Or, that might come from all the times I tell her she's "talking incessantly."

In addition to last week's potty training, soap-wrapping, soapmaking and homeschooling mega-bonanza, I found out from one of my lovely Facebook fans that my site had been hacked.  I'm not talking the rather diminutive hack of two years ago where someone embedded a (bad) link for cheap ED drugs out of Mexico. Nooooo...  This was a full-out hack job that took over my entire site - in both English and Arabic and with music (in English).  It was ugly.  And just in case I didn't fully catch that my site had been hacked, under the red and black image of the grim reaper was the word "hacked," just to make sure I was fully aware.  So, here I am on Friday evening, texting my web guy who was in England working with an asphalt crew on the side of the road late that night (that's a five hour time difference), posting to the Zen Cart forums and initiating a chat with my host's tech support folks.  Donal texts back that he'd be done in two hours (gotta love that kind of dedication!), but in the meantime, the tech support guy at Hostmonster and I explore the hack.  One of the dates of the script changes was 9/11/11.  The significance of that wasn't lost on me, and it made me slightly sick.  In the end, though, the tech support guy got me debugged and unhacked in half an hour or so.  I could see where all the bad files were; I know my cpanel that well (that came up as my website on one of the hacked changes).

My web guy is going for the full deep-end dive, starting his own business thing.  His name's Donal, and he's fantastic. We've worked together for almost 2 1/2 years.  You've really got to appreciate a web guru who'll respond to a panicked text and be willing to work for however long it takes on top of working until the wee hours of the morning doing road work.  He's the best!  If you're interested in making your site work yourself (being able to add your products, add coupons, make script changes, etc.), then he'll also teach you that stuff, too.  He's completely trustworthy; I also have him man my site when I'm on vacation, hunkered down for hurricanes and so forth.  (Click his name; it'll take you to his FB page and you can message him.)

I'll stop blathering now.  Some of my friends and I are talking food!  Yum!

Feel free to post comments.  They don't have to apply to anything in particular since I was pretty all over the board on this week's post.

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Four Ways To Grow a Successful Business

In last week's blog post, I outlined four ways to ruin a good small business.  This week, I want to look at the positive - ways to grow a good small business.  Part of this post is inspired by an email interview my daughter, the head of Girly Arts Made by ME, completed yesterday.  (When the interview is due to air online, I'll post it here.  And on Twitter.  And Facebook.  And maybe on that electronic sign over the interstate.  OK, I don't think NCDOT will let me get by with that last one.)

1.  To grow a successful business, take care of your customers.  This is the most important lesson I can give you.  I once saw a sign in a small business that said, "If we don't take care of our customers, someone else will."  Small business or large, this is an absolute truth.  Prices and products are not going to usurp customer loyalty if a business takes them for granted or treats them with less than the most awesome, personal customer service possible.

2.  To grow a successful business, strike a balance between work and play.  When you can get ahead, do that; it could free you up for some play time later.  Make time to play.  A relaxed company owner is herself a happier, more productive worker and that, in turn, inspires the employees to be happier, more productive and more efficient.

3.  To grow a successful business, create a positive experience for everyone.  You absolutely won't make everyone happy - that's not your job, anyway - but do your best to create positive experiences for contractors, employees, customers, even the delivery folks.  Have an employee who just botched an order?  You as the boss have to work with the employee to fix it, but how can you turn that into a positive?  A customer is unhappy with their order.  Take care of the customer; making this into a positive has the best chance for keeping this customer loyal.

4.  To grow a successful business, approach it with a childlike attitude.  In my faith, there's an emphasis on coming to Jesus as a little child - total faith, complete trust, not over-thinking it.  My daughter approaches her business like this.  She says, "I approach every product I make with the same question:  What will make this product sell?  The answer is, 'Because I made it, and it’s a great product!'"  The possibility of failing in any way is not even a blip on her radar.  She moves forward with the full knowledge that she will be nothing but successful.  She embodies the thought, What would you do if you knew you could not fail?


What other steps would you consider necessary in growing a successful small business?  How might you implement these steps?

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Our Visit to Clean The World

Last week at this time, my husband, older daughter and I were in Orlando, hanging out with a Mouse, many Princesses and a whole bunch of other characters.  We had a wonderful time, and while we were in Orlando, we had to get in a visit to Clean The World, a nonprofit organization that provides soap, lotion, shampoo and conditioner to people in places all over the world where diarrheal, skin and autoimmune diseases are a very real, daily problem.  Soaps, shampoo and conditioner provide needed hygiene measures that help prevent the spread of diseases.  The lotions help soothe the skin, offering relief to open sores among people suffering with HIV/AIDS-related conditions.

This graces one wall of the Clean the World warehouse.

I first became acquainted with Clean The World through the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild after the earthquake that ravaged Haiti in January 2010.  Since then, I've been connected with them through Twitter and Facebook, and Jeremy Chambers, their social media specialist, and I have gotten to know each other through tweets and phone conversations, and he's helped me discover new ways to help support this great organization.  When I knew we were going to be in Orlando, Jeremy arranged for us to meet and to tour their offices and warehouse.

This table of soaps greets visitors.  There's a painted turtle soap on the right-hand side that's adorable!

Jeremy took my husband, daughter and me on a tour, and we were able to meet some of the people behind the scenes at Clean The World.  I'm sorry I don't remember all their names; I'm horrible with names, though I remember all their faces.  One of those we met was Paul Till, co-founder of Clean the World.  (Check out his smile.  You just get the sense that he always exudes this calm joy.)

Left to right - My husband Peter, older daughter Mary, Paul Till, me

After the grand tour of the offices (physically, nothing elaborate or extravagant - "cube hell," mostly), Jeremy took us into the warehouse, which was a marvel of organization and contains a mind-numbing amount of soap.  See for yourself!  Check out the end for opportunities to support this amazing organization, even with something as simple as a text message.

Watch this space, because there's going to be some more opportunities for you to help support this awesome organization, and check out their website at www.CleanTheWorld.org to see everything they're doing.

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How Well Do You Know Your Christmas Songs?

I'd like to announce a fantastic new game for the month of November!  This game will be taking place at my Facebook page and will be my own version of "Name That Tune."  Here's how we'll play...

Every week in November up until Thanksgiving, I'm going to post a snippet from a Christmas song on my Facebook page.  It'll start easy - 5 notes - then gradually get harder.  I'll choose Christmas music of all kinds - traditional, contemporary, carols and secular, but I won't use obscure songs.  Your challenge is to name that tune!  The winner each week will receive a coupon good for $10.00 off an order at Sara's Soaps 'n Such.  You can only win one time, but don't let that keep you from playing.  There's only one little catch:  You must "like" my Facebook page.  But really, how hard is that?  (And I promise, it's not all "buy my products"; there's actually very little of that.)

So, cruise on over to Facebook and get ready for some fun and the opportunity to WIN!  Contest starts Tuesday with the first snippet.

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Pumpkin Soup with Curry

Image via WikipediaThis recipe featured in the CoastViews Magazine Blog and was brought to my attention by Monique, a Facebook friend.  I tried it for the first time last week and, while it didn't hit the palate as we were anticipating (more on that in a bit), it's still a very delicious soup.

You'll need:
3 tablespoons butter
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
4 medium carrots, chopped
3 medium ribs celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
Dash fresh ground black pepper2 tablespoons fresh parsley, or 2 teaspoons parsley flakes
3 cups mashed pumpkin, fresh if possible
2 cups half-and-half or 1 1/2 cups milk and 1/2 cup heavy cream
Parsley or chives for garnish (optional)

Directions:
In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat.  Saute' chopped vegetables until just tender.  Add garlic and vegetable broth and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add curry powder, salt, pepper, parsley and pumpkin.  Stir cream until well blended.  Working in batches, blend until smooth and pour back into the saucepan.  Heat through; add more salt and curry powder as needed.  Garnish with chopped parsley or a few roasted, seasoned pumpkin seeds.

I made this in my Dutch oven, just to make sure it all fit in one pot.  I added an additional teaspoon of curry, which was a bit much.  I've found that ground clove balances the curry without making the soup taste too much like pumpkin pie.  I'd recommend starting with 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves for the whole batch and adjusting to taste from there.  This soup is awesome for cool Autumn nights, and I trimmed a bit more fat by using 1% milk, as opposed to the cream or half-and-half.  It doesn't taste as rich as it might, but it's still very tasty.

The flavor threw us a bit at first, because we're all used to a butternut harvest soup I make as often as possible in the Fall and Winter.  That soup contains sweet potato and apple, among other goodies, and I season it with allspice, cumin, cinnamon and nutmeg, so it's got a bit of a sweeter spicy taste.  I think all of us were looking at the soup, noticing the color and texture and expecting it to taste the same.
I hope your family and you enjoy this treat!

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Bottom Lining It

Image via CrunchBaseAlright.  It's taken me a while, but I simply have to confess, I'm sucking at this blogging thing lately.  What is it?  Time?  Maybe.  Lack of things to talk about?  Yeah, more than likely.  I'd say that both of these are hindered by my laptop being out of commission.  It's like this:  I'm the world's worst for not turning it off.  I'm homeschooling my older daughter all day, squeezing in some soapmaking after school's over, darting into the office to update my Facebook or Twitter streams or, on occasion, fixing or upgrading something on my website.  Do y'all really want to hear about that stuff?  Probably not.

Back to the whole "not turning it off" thing.  I love my laptop and our home's wifi connection because they enable me to watch my shows in the evenings and still get some of my computer work done.  They can also allow me to work on blogs and so forth while I sit in the living room as my daughter works.  Unfortunately, until I can get a new cord for my laptop, neither of those things is happening.  Soon!  Hopefully soon!

Besides my lack of blogs lately, what has been keeping me busy?  I've created a new blog for Moms of all sorts, colors, professions, in-home, out-of-home and even manly moms (aka, Dads).  It's for us and it affirms that we as parents are God's masterpieces, and those children we're raising, nurturing and loving are themselves masterpieces that God created and is still using us to fine tune.

I have a fabulous new private label customer in Elissa, owner and lead stylist at Salon E in Kinston.  Elissa and I met in April at Bee Fest in Kinston and the girls and I had the pleasure of taking a little road trip up to visit with her and discuss her spa collection needs.  How fabulous was that!  It was awesome seeing her again, and I'm so excited about the fantastic products I'm making especially for her.  When her shelves are stocked, I'll post it so you can buy my wonderful soaps and spa treats from her.

Elissa requested two soaps that I didn't have in stock.  Well, I have one of them in stock, but it's a clearanced item.  Her requests were for soaps that get you going in the mornings, and I recommended peppermint and Crystal Coast Morning.  Peppermint simply uses redistilled Peppermint essential oil for an in-your-face, tingle-your-senses bathing experience.  Crystal Coast Morning packs the punch of waking up at the beach on a brisk Winter morning where the only sounds you hear are the waves kissing the sand, birds calling to one another and "ahhhh"- the sound of your first sip of coffee.  You'll be able to get these delectable goodies from Elissa as well.

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The Hype of Social Media

Confession...  I'm a huge crime drama junkie - My week runs through all the CBS "howdunits" from Monday night with CSI: Miami to Thursday night and The Mentalist.  (Numb3rs is off the air and I gave up on Sunday nights - couldn't stay up.)  Last night I was watching Criminal Minds, which is like a dark chocolate dream to this former Psych major, and was fascinated by the whole emphasis on social media.  There were a couple of comments that really stood out for me.

"Online time suck" - Garcia said this about all the social media networking sites - Twitter, Facebook (FB), MySpace and YouTube.  And it's true.  I'm on Twitter and FB, and I can't tell you how many of my connections spend all day in YoVille, Farmville, Mafia Wars and Cafe World.  I skim over those posts, because that's not my thing.  I can see, though, how much time one can spend in a day just between Twitter and FB.  (Incidentally, one friend got away from FB because of all the games on his stream.)

"We all want an audience." (Morgan) - Don't we though?  One question that preceded this comment was, "Do they think anyone cares what they had for breakfast?"  Donna Maria Coles Johnson would argue, "Yes, they do," because readers want to know they're dealing with a person, not a huge, anonymous corporate entity.  I post tweets throughout the day about what I'm doing, irritations, something cute one of my children did, and so forth, but do I really think that all 240 of my followers are raptly staring at their Twitter steams, waiting for the latest from me?  Um, no.  My ego's not nearly that big!

For me, the quality online networking experience comes from selectively choosing my audience and selectively choosing those for whom I will be the audience.  After all, it's about making connections, not about being in the middle of the online equivalent of the Midway at the State Fair.

Question:  What's the most rewarding part of your online social media experience?  How can you use that to improve your interactions?