I'm absolutely thrilled when a new soap is sitting on my desk freshly wrapped, and a customer picks up a bar and describes the scent in a clear and precise way.
Using words like, mysterious and smoky, perfume, but mild. Every nose has its story!
A customer came in yesterday with a tiny sample I'd given her last week wanting me to tell her what the soap was. Her small sample piece was gently used, and I must have sniffed it twenty times, but I could only narrow its flavor down with a guess.
You may find that surprising, that I can't identify the scent of a soap, but I make twenty thousand bars a year, and out of those twenty thousand, comes a vast variety of soap flavors.
We just launched a new summer soap idea. Fill your bag with soap. The concept was created with the idea of clearing out the old and bringing in the old. Seldom, do we have leftover soap at the apothecary shop. Maybe a bar here, or two from the holiday soap stash, or possibly a winter blend, that doesn't fit in with the summer blends. Those soap bars are packed in baskets and sit on the shelf in my back room. After gazing upon the six baskets stacked with seasonal soaps, I thought maybe we could simply offer them in a bulk pack. The concept seems to be popular, as we've sold half of our inventory in just a few short days after introducing them. I had not weighed the soap after the bag was filled, but yesterday I did. If you fill your bag, you'll get over two pounds of soap! They're priced to sell, and well cured, so they'll last a very long time. If I didn't have thousands of bars of soap, that's how Id' purchase the moisture rich bars. Now that I've got ya excited, and eager to fill your bag, there's a limited supply and I'll probably only offer them once a year. That's because we typically don't have a lot of orphan soap hanging around.
Whew, that was a long description of the soap in a bag!
Sorry, I couldn't resist posting this...
This kid reminds me of my brother Mark.
The No Sugar For Me, Thank you, and I'm into day number 7! I'm going to be honest and tell you, the past couple of days without sugar seems to have caught up with my body. I felt a bit sluggish yesterday and the day before and tired, really tired. This morning I'm feeling back to hyper Jill, and I know it's going to take awhile for the sugar to clear out. I'm not even sure how long I'll continue to live a sugar free life, because I'm winging it, but my body will tell me what to do next. Yes body, I'm listening. All joking aside, I do love sugary foods, ice cream, cake, cookies, and I do not wish to remove sugar completely from my diet, but I'm definitely going to be more aware of my intake.
This is a great article about sugar. Funny, these were my thoughts before I read it. Always trust your instincts, they won't lie. I was eating more than twenty - four grams of sugar a day!
Moving towards a different topic. I'm really getting excited about this upcoming event! Amber, owner of Petal's and Potpourri is going to be a guest on the next radio show, and between the two of us, we're going to fill your ears with our excitement chatter. I also want to mention, how wonderful, kind, and sincere Amber, and the folks from Petal's are! It's no wonder why their shop has been around since the seventy's! As a fellow shop owner, I feel grateful to be among such talent, and professionalism.
Cant' wait for the show!
These are another <bottom>Amber's feet. She is modeling the new barefoot sandals that we have at the shop. She could be a foot model!
We're getting closer to starting the construction of our new banquette! I found that table at one of my wholesale suppliers! I about fell over when spotting it! I was thinking that would be the challenge to find a table like this. Just goes to show you how you shouldn't get in a remodel hurry when starting a home project. Now hurry here! However, I am getting anxious after locating the table!
At the shop, we're mixing sea salt, and herbs to create salt cylinders. We're tying little dried lavender bundles to the glass vials.
Happy Summer!
Jill
