The BIG Reveal - Traveling Soaps

I love to travel.  I love home, too - my bed, my cats, my own kitchen.  But with being home so much, I really welcome the opportunity to get away, to see new sites, new parts of the state, or even to have that moment of seeing a familiar site in a new way.  Whether it's a day trip, a weekender or a major vacation, I like exploring.

Our last family trip was a weekender in December to Beaufort, NC.  It's an absolutely lovely little coastal town, and the people in that area are just so friendly, too.  In fact, I was driving through the town leading to Beaufort when one of the police officers pulled me over and issued a personal invitation for me to return to Beaufort next week, actually.  Well, he issued me a speeding ticket, but he was really nice about it.  Since getting that ticket, I learned that one of the pilots on the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger was from Beaufort, and as many times as I've been in that town, I've never paid attention to the memorial to him.  I'm going to go check that out next week after I'm done at the courthouse.  I have a friend with a shop in Beaufort, so I'll stop in and see her, too.

Of course, with all this traveling, I absolutely MUST have good soap with which to bathe, so I always take a small bar of my own soap just in case my only other option is the dreaded "deodorant bar."  Thanks to my mother-in-law, I decided it's time to make these small travel-sized soaps available to my customers, too.  My soaps want to travel!  They want to see the sights!  They want to travel the world!  Will you give them this opportunity?

Lovely little 1-ounce bars of travelin' soapy goodness

These lovely little gems will be ready to own by the very end of February, and they will be ready for you to tuck into your travel bag and take with you as you hit the road this Spring and Summer.  As you travel, I invite you to take pics of your soap and you and email them to me (please, no naked pics) to be featured in an upcoming blog post.  Let's see where these soaps find themselves.

Where will your travels take you this year?

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Giving Life, Making a Difference

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past several years, then you know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  This is the month to promote saving those girls, because women use them to nurture life and men...  Well, men just like them.  As women, it's our responsibility to keep the girls healthy, so please remember to do your monthly self-exams.  I usually do mine on or around the 11th of each month, which is my mom's anniversary date.  Go on now...  Get naked to the waist and feel your boobies!

Yesterday was my mom's 11th anniversary as a breast cancer survivor.  Because of her, I refuse to change anything about my products or labeling to exploit the consumers' tendency to "go pink" this time of year.  Usually, I send her pink carnations (her favorite flowers), but since she was on vacation, I decided to give a different gift.

Before I go further, let me say that I hate - passionately - getting sticks.  I'll tolerate shots and finger pricks, but anything involving a tourniquet and needing a vein, and I avoid it like the plague.  I've been known to pass out as soon as the nurse or phlebotomist even starts thumping my vein.  Yeah, I'm that much of a wimp about it.  So, that being said, I decided to donate blood in a Red Cross Blood Drive.

Time to make a difference for someone

A little O+, anyone?

Can't give blood without getting your orange juice and cookies afterward

To recap:  If I can get stuck with a very large needle without crying, passing out or whimpering through it, so can you.  It'll make a huge difference in the life of someone who needs a transfusion.  Feel your boobies.  See if you feel anything that shouldn't be there.  If you do, don't try to convince yourself it's normal.  Go to your doctor ASAP.  Get a mammogram.  A negative mammogram is better than an undiagnosed malignant tumor.  This goes for men, too.  I would wager that breast cancer in men is often more life-threatening than in women - not because the cancer is necessarily more malignant, but because it so seldom gets detected early enough.

What steps are you taking to protect your health?  What steps have you taken to help protect the health of others?

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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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Summer's End

It hardly seems believable that Summer vacation is drawing to a close.  We're doing a year-around schedule for homeschool this year, so we've already been back to school for a month.  Yet, my Facebook news feed is buzzing with tears and joy from parents whose children are going back to school this week or starting school this week.  Those moms I met in our kindergarten year are wondering how they suddenly have third graders.  I'm right there with them, remembering the excitement my daughter felt about her first day of school and then wiping tears with the moms of her classmates in the parking lot.

I have friends whose children are going back to school and who are delighted.  It's been a long summer, especially here in Pender County, with forest fires polluting the air to the degree that it's been unpleasant being out for long.  We endured weeks of 100+ degree temps and are chillin' with temps around 90 (cold front!).  Our neighbors have dismantled their pool and put it by the curb for trash pick-up, we battled the traffic around UNCW during freshman move-in weekend and amongst my colleagues - fellow soapmakers - the soap pots are brewing up warmer soap fragrances, those that are more autumnal.  Yes, Summer is well and truly coming to a close.

Image by Sara's Soaps via FlickrA part of me is sad to see it come to a close, yet we'll be enjoying weeks more of summer temperatures.  After all, Summer doesn't officially end for almost another month, and with homeschooling, we have the freedom to hit the beach pretty much whenever we wish.  My own soap pot will soon be producing Christmas spice soap, in conjunction with festive Autumn and Winter lotions and lip balms.

If you want to carry a bit of Summer with you, why not grab a Sun On The Go set to take your mind back to that tropical paradise where you vacationed?  You could also pucker up with a delicious fruity lip balm in some awesome flavors!  To celebrate being back at school, pick up some Literary Lip Balms in such fun flavors as The Grape Gatsby, This Side of Paradise and Lip Balm on the Orient Express  Finally, for the parent who's dealt with Summer restlessness followed by Summer boredom followed by more restlessness, treat yourself to a mini-spa at home.  After all, you now have 6-7 hours a day all to yourself, and my Mediterranean Spa Collection is a great way to pamper your body and your senses.

Do you have children going back to school?  What's different for you in your home now?


Don't forget, Free Shipping Friday is happening in TWO DAYS!

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Steps

I've been looking at feet lately - namely, those of my girls.  (It's crazy where I'll find inspiration for blog posts sometimes!)  What I've observed has some good guiding principles for business.

Observation #1:  My baby likes to walk around in her big sister's shoes and in my shoes - mainly her sis's.  How can one apply this to business?  Have shoes in which those coming behind you want to walk.  In a literal sense, if you're a shoe fashionista, you're not going to want to put your feet into a pair of grungy, beat-up shoes from three seasons ago.  Likewise with business.  People don't want to walk in the footsteps of business owners who are behind the times, irrelevant to the current market and treat their customers poorly.  They want to emulate businesses who change and grow with the times, who treat their customers like royalty and who are somewhat adventurous in how they approach business.

Observation #2:  When my baby and I go down the stairs, she'll sometimes let her foot hover over the next step for a few seconds before stepping down.  She'll let it hover, pull it back to the step, giggle, let it hover again and then finally step.  It reminds me of when I had to take my deep-water swim test in college to pass P.E.  I didn't learn to swim until college, and as I stood on the edge of the pool down at the deep end, all I kept thinking was, "It's over a one-story drop from here to the bottom of the pool."  Never mind that I'm buoyant and would never have gone all the way to the bottom; all laws of physics were moot at that point.  Besides, the water never studied law or physics.  Well, my baby makes it down the stairs and I passed P.E. (and, therefore, college), but it takes a giant leap of faith.  She has to trust that I'm going to hold her hand, not let her fall down the steps.  I had to trust that the water would, in fact, hold me up.

Business often relies on these leaps of faith, too.  While there's a lot to be said for planning and drafting ideas, creating a budget around those ideas and so forth, eventually you've got to stop planning and just do.  It's scary.  What if the plan fails?  What if an unexpected expense pushes you over budget?  What if the plan succeeds?  What if you come in under budget with a perfect execution?  Sometimes, success can be just as scary as failure (but in a good way).

Observation #3:  Sometimes, my baby tries to go down the steps too fast and ends up falling.  She takes a step and almost without pausing, she takes another step with the other foot, feeling so successful that she wants to take a bunch more - more steps and faster than she's ready for.  As it is with business, it can be easy to ride on a success and suddenly want to do more, faster than for which we're prepared, with miserable results.  Then we need to fight the temptation and stop, proceeding through our next steps slowly and cautiously, being careful to make sure we are firmly stable on one step before going on to the next one.

What are some important steps you'd recommend for someone just starting out in business, taking those initial baby steps?

I've got the Blues... Blueberries, that is

Saturday's the day - my biggest show of the year.  This Saturday is the North Carolina Blueberry Festival.  Peter and I are busy putting the finishing touches on production, and tomorrow will be the mega-wrapping day.  Much of our wares are already wrapped and labeled, but there's a little bit left to go.  What's new and great this year?  We'll be selling a limited edition Blueberry Festival soap featuring the Blueberry Fest logo and a yummy blueberry fragrance.

Image by Sara's Soaps via FlickrWe'll have a variety of the much-loved flip-flop soaps, including a newish one that looks like last year's Blueberry Flip Flop soap but with a great scent I'm calling Beach Bound.  There will be many Blueberry and Blueberries & Cream homemade soaps there.  These are wonderful soaps and are a delight for skin.

We'll also have some new lip balm flavors from which to choose.  And, last but not least, we'll have a number of my daughter's Sun On The Go sets.

The biggest deals will be FREE Blueberry Lip Balm with a $10.00 purchase, and the Bargain Box, a full box of great soaps that are less-than-gorgeous and on sale for $2.00 each.  Get 'em while you can; after this show, leftover soaps will be donated to Clean The World.  We'll be there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., booth #72, near the intersection of Wilmington Street and S. Walker Road.

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They're coming!

Tomorrow's the day!  Oooh, we're sooo excited!  I simply must make room in the living room - dump peanuts, crush boxes (thank goodness tomorrow's trash day), pick up some clutter.  The cute guy in the brown uniform is coming!  He'll be grateful that this week's box will be light - mostly lip balm tubes, caps and replacement items from an order mix-up (not like last week's huge pail of palm oil and some bases).  The fairly cute guy in the blue uniform is showing up, too.  The poor FedEx guy, though, has to haul up three boxes, one of which containing soap base.

Yes, tomorrow is box day.  I've got shipments coming from two separate suppliers and there will be enough goodies in those boxes to do all sorts of wondrous creating.  Lip balm tubes to finish a large order for my private label customer.  Strawberry lip balm flavoring so I can make delicious strawberry lip balms for a festival I'm doing in a couple of weeks.  Strawberry seeds to go in a strawberry soap I'll be making.  And white soap base to finish a wedding order and to make more flip flops.  You bet I'm thrilled!  I have a light weekend and will have lots of time to create!

I'll keep you posted on all the new goodies that will be hitting the rack.  It'll be good having some of my old favorites fresh and back in stock.

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Spring Preview

About two weeks ago, as I was preparing for that big show at Camp Lejeune, my daughter walks up to me where I was wrapping soaps and says, "Mommy, I want to add a lip balm to my line, and I want to name it this, flavor it that and package it like this."  Once I picked my jaw up off the ground - I was very impressed by her well thought-out presentation - I said, "Sounds like a great product!  Let's see what we can find."

After several discussions, she decided to extend it to a set that would include products that would be scented to complement the lip balm.  Last Friday evening over dinner, we hammered out some of the details about the specific products.  Saturday over lunch, we browsed online for the packaging elements.  I placed the orders Saturday afternoon and most of them arrived today.  My goal is to present these beautiful creations at Bee Fest in Kinston this Saturday.

Since the timing was so tight, we decided to go ahead and make up our bases on Sunday.  That'd save us some steps and a lot of time once the fragrances and containers showed up.

These are the bases we created. The top one is lip balm base, a luxuriously silky, nourishing treat made with beeswax from North Carolina bees and premium oils. The second base is homemade castille soap base. This soap is fabulous! It has a nice fluffy lather and leaves skin so silky smooth.  Finally, the white base is our homemade aloe vera lotion base.  This lotion is the best treat for your skin after being out in the sun all day.

Sooo...  What are we doing with these bases?  Well, that, my dears, is a big ol' wait and see.  We should be ready for the big reveal by week's end.  Yeah, we're really stoked about these incredible products and just know you'll love them, too!

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What Makes a Great Seller?

This past weekend saw me spending a considerable amount of time on base at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC, working the Hidden Talents Craft Show.  The show was pretty disappointing; lots of people, lots of browsers, but few buyers.  I discovered on Sunday as I was in a c-mart getting gas and munchies that I figured out what was going on.  The federal government has failed to pass a balanced budget so far, and if they miss the deadline, then none of the federal employees get paid, including the military.  Sure, they get paid retroactively, but retroactive pay doesn't put food on the table now.

Finding redemption in every situation, I encountered a lovely lady named Lisa who is new to small business.  Lisa is owner of Bath Bombs Away and her business is, obviously, all bath bombs.  Oh my gosh!  They were huge!  And gorgeous!  If I didn't know what they were, I'd want to try sticking a spoon in them and taking a bite; they looked like sorbet in mixed flavors, and her packaging was clever and eye-catching.

We often take for granted those things that make our businesses run and that make people want to enter our space - whether a show booth, an online store or a brick-and-mortar store.  I know I often focus more on my products than the intangibles that I bring to my business.  Given that slight jadedness, it was refreshing to see a relative newby working the show (Lisa's booth was across from ours and over one).  This is what I noticed she had going for her:

• Great products - As I said, her bath bombs looked absolutely delicious and smelled awesome.  They were also all-natural, scented with essential oils.
• Product knowledge - Unlike some bath and body manufacturers who go from making a product to wanting to sell it in a week, Lisa demonstrated that she'd done her research.  She knows her ingredients and possesses information about shelf life and essential oil properties.
• Awesome personality - Lisa was working the crowd.  She cooed over babies, warmly welcomed customers into her space and engaged people.  Her magnetic personality was a great draw.

If you're going to sell products to anyone, it's important to remember that you're selling part of yourself with each product you sell.  I'll talk more about the prostitution of entrepreneurship in a later post.

What attributes do you think are important in selling your goods and services?

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First World Problems

With all the unrest recently in the Middle East as citizens of various countries are protesting their governments and fighting for democracy - even going so far as to risk their lives in many cases - I've thought about how good we have it here in America.  Our time of fighting for our freedoms and democracy has passed.  As I hear reports of so many people who not only have not had the democracy we take for granted, but who have also been living in abject poverty, I start comparing our problems in the First World to their problems in the Third World.  Let's look at First World problems first:

• Can't find the TV remote
• Lock keys in car
• Computer crashes
• Have to clean out the refrigerator
• Air conditioning runs out of freon on the hottest day of the year

Now let's look at some of those problems the Third World faces:

• Debilitating illness because of diseases
• No food to eat
• No clean water to drink
• Child dies of starvation
• Living in daily fear of nation's military

Looking at these Third World problems can make our "huge problems" feel quite manageable and certainly not like it's going to be the end of the world.  We could have eaten that food we just threw out when we cleaned the fridge.  We can go to the doctor when we're sick.  Government programs ensure our children will have food, even if we can't afford to pay for it ourselves.  Our military fights for us, not against us.

One company is making a huge difference to combat some of these Third World Problems.  Clean The World is an Orlando, FL - based company that's working hard to reduce the number of deaths caused by cholera and diarrheal diseases.  It's all in how you wash your hands.  Clean The World collects bars of soap to distribute in Third World countries; they also collect scraps of soaps and rebatch them into small bars of soap.  I've got a few bags of scraps that are slated for this mission, with big plans on the horizon that I'll share as it gets closer to the time.

Do you want to help this fabulous organization?  The biggest help you can give them right now is to text "clean" to 20222 to donate $10.  Your money will provide soaps for 35 children for a month.

What are some First World problems you encounter, and how does thinking about very real Third World problems help you put them into perspective?

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Making Soap New School

Last month, I discovered that my Great-Grandma used to make her own soap.  Dad says that stuff would dry up poison ivy in twenty-four hours!  Yeah, it was that strong.  It shouldn't surprise me that Grandma made her own soap.  After all, in the early 20th century, pretty much every good farm wife made soap for the family, for bathing, laundry and washing dishes.  I'm impressed, though, because not only did Grandma make her own soap, but she also made her own lye.

Still, while this was a common practice a hundred years ago and not terribly remarkable, it's somehow thrilling to me to realize that I've got soapmaking in my family tree, especially a lady I loved and admired a great deal.  When Dad was over at our house a few days after telling me this, I happened to be making a batch of laundry soap in the crockpot.  This is soapmaking new school.  He remembers watching his grandma standing over a black iron pot over an open flame in the yard, stirring the soap endlessly, waiting for it to saponify (become soap).  This would take hours!  Keep in mind, a batch had to bathe all the bodies, all the clothes and all the dishes, and the larger the batch, the longer it takes to "become." 

Now, my soaps won't clear up poison ivy in twenty-four hours, and I have to specially formulate the batch to make it suitable for laundry.  Yes, my laundry soap will get you clean, but it's not nearly as moisturizing as my goat's milk soaps.  So what does "new school" look like?

Lye is bought, not made.  You can make lye by pouring water through ashes, over and over, but this makes a combination of sodium hydroxide (lye) and potassium hydroxide (potash).  I don't have an easy source for ashes, so I just buy my lye over the Internet, or, if I'm out and desperate, at the local hardware store.

Stirring is done by a stick blender, not by hand-stirring with a wooden spoon.  Hand stirring soap can take a few hours at best with some batches.  Stirring with a stick blender takes about five minutes, max.  This spares the arms a lot of agony, plus gets the soapmaker on with life faster.

Soap can cure for longer periods.  Folks like my Great-Grandma didn't have four-to-eight weeks to wait for soap to cure before they could use it.  It needed to be ready right then.

The crock pot has replaced the iron pot (at least in my kitchen).  Instead of adding heat by cooking the soap over an open flame, now we let the crockpot do all the work for us.  It's not quite a matter of turning it on and forgetting about it, but it's close.  My soap can cook in as little as 45 minutes or as long as three hours.  Either way, I'm not stirring it constantly.

So...  For what "old fashioned" thing are you grateful we have modern equivalents now?

Sixty-four a Day

Sixty-four... what?  Bars of soap?  Sometimes!  Bottles of lotion?  Possibly.  Tubes of lip balm?  Nope.

Sixty-four ounces of water daily.  This is my favorite and easiest fitness trick.  I start with 16 ounces when I take my morning pills - eight for my multivitamin, another eight for my Claritin.  This is a hard goal to reach when it's 35 degrees and cloudy outside.  After all, who wants to put even tap cold water into a body already bundled up against the cold?  However, as the days get warmer and more humid, that 64 ounces is very attainable.

I use water to stave off cravings, too.  My family gave me a scrumptious Andes Mint Cheesecake for Mother's Day, some of which is still in the fridge.  Last night I was thinking, "Hm, a slice of that sure would be good!"  Then I remembered something a friend told me one time:  "Hunger can also be your body's way of telling you you're dehydrated."  That stuck with me, and often when I find myself really wanting a sweet something (like a slice of cheesecake), I instead bypass the fridge and pantry and refill my water cup.  Works almost every time (though I'm not opposed to grabbing a Kiss from the bowl, either).

Question...  What's your favorite and easiest fitness trick?