Post Card Mania

What a great place!!  We were invited to the employee shopping at Post Card Mania in Clearwater and did we have fun.  I wish I'd brought my camera but alas it stayed at home.  However what I can tell you is that our new sugar scrub and body butter gift baskets literally flew out the door!!  All of our thanks to the employees, boss and Ferris who made our day so wonderful, Sybrina and I had so much fun!!

I've had so many people asking that I've gone and gotten Gift Certificates for the Holidays!!  Denominations start at $5.00 and up in store only,  and for our online shoppers we'll have a page opening up soon!!

All Kinds of Fun

In case you missed it we've got a few new shows we're attending!  Postcard Mania in Clearwater tomorrow from 12-2.  Grand Central District in St. Pete from 11-3 this coming Sunday, Dec. 6th.  Up and coming for the new year is the Dade City Kumquat Festival on Jan. 30th, 2010.
We also have a new store, the Spotted Donkey in Texas, I'll have more information closer to her opening!

I have to show these off!  For those of you who've had our soaps before, I redesigned our bands, showing them off with and without The Greenhouse Soaps logo!!  So much better than before I think!!

I've got news

I've got some great news!  WE'RE NATIONAL!!!  We're in Texas now at a great store called the Spotted Donkey which will be opening soon!  I'll see if I can get Cathy to send us some pictures!!

This past week has been great as we're entering into the busy season!  Three large, large and larger soap orders which all had to be finished by yesterday!  Now we have a craft show to get ready for tomorrow at the Safety Harbor Rec Center!!

In case ya'll missed it, I've been coming out with not only a few new soaps but new colors too!  This one is Ocean Breeze, it's a great clean scent and works great for the guys and gals....I'll have more of a description soon!

The new Sweet Pea color!

The New Coco Mango!  I love the variety of colors in the soap!

The New Lavender....heh I figured I could finally make it purple!!

Last but not least our Lilac- Yup decided that should be a lavender color also!!

Have I been Busy!

Aside from the August Simple Living order, I had another to fill at the start of September! And looks like I'm going to have my soaps in another store soon....can't say which yet but the good news is coming :0)
I've happily been playing with a few of my new things. My all Organic Lip Conditioning Balm, this one is scented in Peppermint Essential Oil. It really does heal up those chapped lips.

Where has the time gone??

Is it just me or has the time flown by since the start of the year?? I actually hadn't felt much like writing since my Nana Ruth passed away last month. But time does march on and while I miss her like crazy, I've got things to do! Soap waits for no one! Heh, we just finished our monthly craft show, boy what a mess! It POURED just after we'd set up and we didn't have enough time to put our tarps out! Ten minutes later and a bunch of wet labels (not soaps) the crowd came out, fortunately all were understanding about our drippy labels. So ya'll know what I'm going to be doing this week!

Last week I just finished another soap order for Simple Living in St Pete, as you can see from the pic's that's a whole lot of soap....and that's not even all of it! I had more curing on the racks in my soap room.
I'm trying like heck to finish building my wholesale soap pages....yup you heard it, I'm going to be branching out into wholesale too! So excited about all of our recent changes!!

The kids go back to school this Tuesday, with the super summer we had I'm going to miss them so much! However I'm not crazy about waking up with my oldest at 5:15 to get him going for the bus......gah

sidetracked #2

While waiting for my sugar cubes to stiffen up a bit, I had it in my head to do something about all my soap scraps! Those slivers really add up after awhile.

So I created my Odd Ballz, hubby said it looks like a weird geode, my eldest said it looked like a food pod and what exactly did I have in there? Now that was funny as he got his nose right over them, still not convinced that it wasn't some odd looking food! Of course me being me, didn't want to do the usual soap balls so I get this idea to wrap my pre cooled ball with another layer of soap, really funky looking eh?


I'm itching to roll a bright yellow center with perhaps a green outer layer, now wouldn't that be something?!!

sidetracked

heh, well that previous post of mine about making soaps for the upcoming craft show? Ummmm.... well that didn't happen. I ended up on the soap queen's page and saw these cute sugar bath cubes! And I thought to myself, hey I've not tried those before, needless to say the first one wasn't too good (I hate wasting product) and crumbled into many, many pieces as I cut though it. However the others I did went perfectly! Sybrina and I of course had to test it at the kitchen sink, and we're pleased to say it certainly exfoliates well, my arms were tingling for awhile and the oils absorbed almost as soon as I was done drying! Syb thought it was too cool. The peach color is much prettier than the muted pic above my stove top and this is before I popped them out of the mold. Yummy Magnolia.
I'll really have to work to get them out before the show though, the good thing is it's really easy to do, you just have to be super quick after the sugar gets poured in!

The Fun is Over!

LOL, well I'm back into the swing of soap making after taking close to a week off from getting back from vacation! It was weird really, my schedule was so off from having too much fun I suppose that I pretty much sat around like a slug last week! Today I'm raring to go, I've got a few soap calls to make, orders to fill and a craft show to get ready for next week....YIKES, next week?!! Have I said how much I love my job?? I DO!! I've got all my soap equipment ready, my fragrance oils and essential oils all set out and I'm done talking!

My new Body Butter is here!

I finally buckled down and made some body butter!!
I've had these out for a week now and they seem to be really popular! I couldn't be happier because along with adding extra Apricot Oil I've added 5 yes FIVE teaspoons of Aloe Vera to each 4 ounce tub!! It's so thick you can actually hold the tub upside down and not one drop of body butter comes out. I personally use it morning and night, now maybe I'm biased :0) but I really feel soft and moisturized, not to mention pampered. AND it's super quick at absorbing into my skin. A few quick swipes and it's gone. Not only does a little bit go a longggggggg way, but the extra perk is it holds it's scent for hours. So be forewarned!

craft show

Whew another busy weekend over, time to sit on the couch and veg out with a book! Vic and I want to show some pictures from the SHAAA craft show we were at Saturday. Oops, it looks like Vic was busy playing a game at the Verizon Fios tent! We put the sides up because anyone around the North Clearwater/Safety Harbor area was awake around 3 that morning with the lightening storm from heck! Anyways the weather guy said it probably would rain through the day. So we thought, better to be prepared than not, needless to say it was a bright beautiful day!
This was the guy set up next to us, I'll have to post his name later, I know I have it in my stuff somewhere. Loved the paintings, on some of them he really captured the essence of the subject, you could almost reach out and touch them!

I have an excuse!

Oh I know, you'll look at this picture and think what has that got to do with soap? Everything!!
You see I was actually TRYING to gather all my soap making supplies for an early morning soap session before I had to run some errands. Then there was a knock, well more like a banging at the garage door. When I peek through the curtain wondering if the hound of hell are actually trying to get in. What do I see? This, in Sybrina's arms! What the heck?? Syb had just gone out rollerblading when she found Daisy Duke here asleep in the middle of the street, asleep?? Wha? Syb transferred her to me, so I could make sure the poor gal hadn't been hit by a car, because who ever heard of a dog sleeping in the street. Well not me. I sent Syb to look down the streets see if we could find someone looking for this beauty and off she went, meanwhile Vic and I got the job of babysitting, YES it was a real chore, see. An extra collar to find, leash to procure, water bowl to fill....whew
About the time I decided to get some shoes on and put Vic and Daisy Duke in the car to go find Syb and take them all down to the Humane Society, Syb shows up with the owner! I'd love to tell you what Daisy Dukes name was but it's barely pronounceable let alone me attempting to type it. However Syb found Daisy Dukes mom and brought her to us. I'm happy to report that mom and Daisy were happily reunited, we learned from her mom that Daisy had squeezed out under the fence the day before we found her, which might explain why the poor girl was sleeping in the street, she was pooped!
There you have it, my excuse for knocking a few hours off my soap making schedule....do you think it was a good one?

We're in a new place!

So excited! I just dropped off this tray of goodies to the newest place you can find our soaps!
All those cute little petal green boxes holds my one ounce guest soaps, looks good eh?
The place is called Laser Hair Removal and Skin Care Center, I met Jenn and Nancy I'd already met at the last Safety Harbor Show. They made me feel right at home! A free consultation from what I understand. The soaps and body butter can be ordered and picked up from their office and the shipping charge is waived for this! Call 1-800-527-3742 for all of their services.

Soap Store Transforming

Happy Memorial Day!
Let's not forget all those soldiers who have given their lives to keep our country free!

I wanted to post new pic's of my store's transformation. Hubby has built me some great new display shelving. Tons of an improvement over the flat eight foot table that the flea market gives you. For all those that don't know, Sybrina and I work at our booth at the Oldsmar Flea Market every Saturday and Sunday. Booth E26 East if ya'll want to stop by and sit a spell.
Anyways I digress, my new shelving!! Jeff brought the third one by this past Saturday, it sits at the back left of the store and of course I had to move some things around but it really looks great...will have more pic's soon. AND he's going to be building me at least two more for the left side of the store, I'm so excited!

Perpetually behind!

Have I said how much I love what I do? Well I do!! As for being behind well it's not too bad a place to be. You see we had our monthly craft show in Safety Harbor this past Friday and the amount of people around our booth was overwhelming! A huge Thank YOU to everyone who showed up and supported us, even the compliments were flowing and I appreciated each and every one of them. It really was a great weekend!
I've been busy, busy, busy making soaps for our next Craft Show coming up on June 6th, at Daisy Douglas Park in Safety Harbor from 11am to 5. You know I'm sitting here thinking that by the time we do the June 6th show the kids will be out of school! Wow.

I've got a few more scents done today for the solid lotion bars, Sweet Pea and Oriental Musk. I also just restocked the Cedar and Saffron (love that scent) that sold out at the show! Hopefully I'll have pictures soon, can't take them until the sun starts shining around here! However I do have a pic of my new hand lotions, taken by Sybrina.

Knights on Broadway

Busy, busy week! But first I have to crow a wee bit! My daughter who turned 13 (yes she's FINALLY a teenager~according to her~) Had a part in her classes first musical. All my toting her back and forth to practices the past couple weeks was worth it as soon as the show started. Oak Grove Middle School, put on a spectacular show! I'll admit a few times I got all teary eyed just thinking about how grown up my baby looked. This is from The Chorus Line, shes the doll in the middle!

Our Craft Show for Make a Wish

Last Saturdays Craft Show was super! TGI Fridays hosted the whole thing with all the proceeds and vendors money going directly to the Make a Wish Foundation. I was impressed with that, as usually the host will give a small percentage to an organization. After we'd set up, our host Rob passed each vendor a $10.00 certificate for lunch at TGI Fridays!! Heck forget the lunches we brought, Vic had a burger which was soooo big he couldn't finish and that's saying something. I had a chicken Cesar salad from their $5.00 menu. We had a great time, met lots of new people and want to thank TGI Fridays and Rob!!
We had a smaller set up because Vic and I were at TGI Fridays while Jeff and Sybrina manned the store.

We had a picnic!

Every once in a great while we all can match our schedules to get together. Today was that day! The backyard of my mom & dad's house. With my brother and sis in law, nephew Logan, all my kiddies and hubby and of course my Nana Ruth, here's a pic of Logan discovering the joys of ice cubes! I ate too much, no soap making and I just might have a craft show to set up for this Saturday! Yikes!!

New Soap!

Sometimes I just feel wild and zany and out pops a new bar, this one is an herbal bar I'm thinking we'll name it The Polar Bar. Those of us that live in hot climates like Florida, we welcome a cool shower to escape the days heat. And what better than a cool shower but a Polar Bar to go with it! Cooling Peppermint Essential Oil, Ginger Powder, Witch Hazel, if this bar doesn't cool you down I'd be surprised! I'll have the complete ingredients on my site when it's firm enough to cut.

Waiting

Fantastic weekend! Now as I'm trying to get back into the swing of things a package comes. Yippie, my new line of foaming bath butter arrived and so did my lip balm tubes!! Now here's where the patience part comes in, the jars for the whipped butter are coming from another site...sigh and the so is the sweetener I order for the lip balms I want to make! Instead of getting into my groove I'm starting to feel like Sponge Bob!!
I'm so wanting to get started, as hubby is building me new display racks for my store!! He should have them done in time for this next weekend. I'm so happy that I'm not concentrating on what I should be doing, hmmmmm...mainly getting more Fl. Sunshine back in stock...back to work!

I'm sooooooo excited!!

I took a whole bunch of new soap pictures today, YES I'm trying to update my website with some prettier looking soaps than what I've got now! AND I'm getting new things to play with! What is it you ask? Well, I'm getting Foaming Body Wash! AND large Malibu containers for the hand lotions I want to make, I'm also getting in lip balm tubes (I'm hoping it doesn't take me too long to figure out a formula and design the labels). Last but not least I'm getting in some crazy 8 ounce bath salt tubes...they look cute as can be online. I figure by the end of next week I'm going to have my hands full :0)
Oh a new pic of my Patchouli Musk
Oops, forgot, later tonight Syb and I are going to check out another monthly craft show, it's a little further away from us but it might be worth the drive!

Our Craft Show this Past Friday!

I want to thank each and every one of you who made our craft show great! Even if it was just to stop and tell us how wonderful our soap smelled, Thank YOU!!
I've got some pics of the craft show with our new soap boxes, I loved them! So easy to set up and easily accessible for everyone. I've even added a pic of my new soaps on a rope, I love the darned things...and from the comments I received lots of other folks did too!

My March Madness

3-17-09 Gads where has the time gone? Ah well, busy me has just filled another order from Simple Living Homes, plus I'm trying to get ready for the craft show in Safety Harbor this Friday AND I was just hired to make guest soaps for a bed and breakfast in Tampa called Equus Meadow Inn! Whew, today I came up with a new way to make the Basil Sage, so cute I actually made chunks full of ground basil and added those right before I poured, I think it looks better, blends more with the Basil Sage picture in my head.