Next I tried out an idea I saw on the Soap Queen’s blog for Hot Cocoa With Marshmallows. This one was really fun to make and even though my marshmallows collapsed on this first batch (I shouldn’t have insulated the mold) I was pretty happy with the result. This fragrance is mouthwatering too! My son Devon already grabbed an off-cut from this batch for his bathroom.

These little guys are my first successful Melt & Pour soap projects. Working with M&P takes a steady hand and there is definitely a learning curve to figuring out the proper temps for pouring and levels of fragrance and colours. I’m really happy with how these came out. I’m making more this week!

Oh, I almost forgot my Pumpkin Pie Soap! This was made in 2 layers. The bottom layer has real pureed pumpkin in it for the great orange colour, and the fluffy white topping is made from a separate batch of whipped soap and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spices for the final touch. Who doesn’t love the scent of a pumpkin pie baking? This fragrance is fantastic!

My history with making bath bombs can be summed up in one word: FRUSTRATION.

a) I can’t get the 2 halves of the round bombs to stick together consistently

b) My round bombs usually get big cavernous cracks around them when they dry

SO– this is my solution: Bath bombs made with soap molds! I love how these came out. The details are so pretty. These are scented with Fresh Rain fragrance which I also used to make my Vancouver Rain soap.

Only 5 days till Christmas! This is the week where I start getting really anxious because I never have all my shopping done.  We are having Christmas dinner here for the extended family, so the house needs to be cleaned, food (and booze!)  shopping needs to be done, presents wrapped….and probably a million other things. I’m working today and then overnight tomorrow, so my time is getting really crunched. Hopefully I can motivate my men to help me get things ready. So, just need to work a night shift tomorrow and then it’s full-on Christmas prep!

Every year, we do a big Christmas breakfast to eat after we open our gifts. I do an egg strata the night before that goes straight into the oven in the morning, and overnight french toast for Devon. Maybe I can actually get all my gift wrapping done before Christmas Eve this year. I hate that late-night frantic wrapping and tagging!

In other news, I’m waiting to hear back from a leasing agent about renting a selling cart space at Semiahmoo Centre during the week leading up to Valentines Day to sell my soaps. There’s a Body Shop in the mall though, so I had to submit a letter describing my products and how they differ from The Body Shop’s stuff and we’re waiting to hear back from the mall administration. No word this week- hopefully Monday! If it’s yes, then I’ve got lots of soap to make by then. Of course I have no way of knowing how much I will sell, so it’s really guess work knowing how much to prepare, and which products to include. I’m planning to focus on my soap though.

Here’s a pic I took of part of my soap display at my last pre-Christmas craft fair. I loved how my soaps looked on this. I made it out of scrap styrofoam packing materials!

Here’s my most recent batch right after cutting. It’s scented with Pineapple Cilantro but I think it smells just like fresh pineapple. I added some coconut shreds for scrubbiness too. This one will be ready for sale on Jan 13th.

I got my first 2 sales from my Juicybath Etsy shop this week! Out of the blue– a Rosemary Mint bar, and then later the same day, a Licorice scented Lump of Coal. I was so excited. I actually found a couple of local buyers to purchase the rest of my batch of Lump Of Coal Soaps. I was so glad because I did a lot of work to get the packaging and the tags just right.  I think they turned out really well.

In case it’s not readable in the photo, the gift tag says:

You’ve Been Naughty

Here’s Your Lump Of Coal

Handcrafted Soap

Licorice Scented

]]> http://www.triagefromhome.com/2009/12/the-countdown-is-on/feed/ 1 http://www.triagefromhome.com/2009/01/new-year-new-stuff/ http://www.triagefromhome.com/2009/01/new-year-new-stuff/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:31:00 +0000 Helen http://www.triagefromhome.com/?p=154 Wow, I haven’t updated in weeks. I took a break from Etsy, Twitter and the blog over Christmas. We did our usual Christmas morning at home with the kids. Jon created scavenger hunts for the them (and me!) which was really fun. He makes up the cutest hints and each hint carries a letter- put all the letters together and unscramble them to find the location of the gift. Examples of his hints: ‘Touch this drawer and the dogs will bark like crazy’ (drawer we keep the dogs’ leashes in) and ‘Jon spent a long time under this lately with not much progress being made’ (leaky bathroom sink) It draws out the gift opening for a while and makes the morning more fun. We had our (now traditional) baked breakfast casserole and baked french toast. Then we made our way over to my Mom’s place in Langley for Christmas dinner. My aunt (my mom’s older sister who is 91) was here from California over Christmas and my sister, her husband and daughter came from Campbell River, as well as the rest of the local family members. It was so nice to have everyone together.
Jon and I spent Boxing Day in our traditional way: in our pajamas watching movies. We had a nice fire in the fireplace and nibbles and drinks while we watched “Wall-E” (loved it) and “The Dark Knight” (I was lost half-way through).

New Years Eve was spent having a fondue dinner with the kids, who both ran off to parties afterwards. I think Devon and I might have poisoned ourselves by eating the chicken. I do remember touching the raw chicken with my fingers when putting it onto my fodue fork to cook it. Probably cross contaminated….I started to feel quite ill a few hours later. Jon and I watched “Slumdog Millionaire” and I had to go to bed before it finished (at 11:30!) because I felt so sick. We finished watching the rest of the movie the next night. Great film if you get the chance– see it! I haven’t seen many good movies lately, so this was a treat.
Backing up a bit, I think it was right around Christmas time; our clothes dryer stopped working. The drum wasn’t turning. Jon took it apart but it wasn’t obvious what was wrong. We did a search online and found that the dryer is about 30 years old. Here’s how our laundry room looked before we moved in:

I think we both realized it was time to take advantage of some Boxing Week sales (I hate that term, it’s BOXING DAY, there is no Boxing WEEK!) Anyway, we bought a set of front loaders at a deep discount, no PST and a hydro rebate of $50 on the washer, no payments till April on our Sears card. We even got the delivery thrown in free of charge. I found someone on Craigslist to come and pick up the old machines, which saved us another $40 Sears was going to charge to take them away. We waited 10 days for them to be delivered and then spent 2 whole days washing and drying everything we could find. The clothes come out of the washer so dry already from the high speed spin, that the drying takes no time at all. We love our new laundry team! Jon even got a new vent pipe and exhaust for it. Now he is constructing some shelving and a work surface to go over top of the machines for me. (Yeay, Ikea) I love order and organization:-)

I’ve been wondering what happened to my sales in my Etsy shop for the past 10 days, but then I realized today that I’ve been getting emails from local buyers all week. It’s actually been my best week of sales so far, and that’s all overflow from the craft fairs I did, people who picked up my business cards or saw one of my items that a friend bought. It’s been great! Even got a second order today from someone who received her first items and wanted more (thanks C!)

I’m working on plans to open my second Etsy shop soon. Jon is building me a light box because the first sets of photos he took weren’t up to his standards:-) This next shop will be really fun because it involves doing something I really enjoy. Juicybags is fun, but I got a bit burnt out from all the pouch cleaning and sewing. I will keep it going, but on a smaller scale for a while- listing items on Etsy that I have in stock rather than doing custom orders.

I met someone briefly at the ‘Best of 604′ event last week. She’s a local blogger with a very interesting story and I’m enjoying reading it. I especially enjoyed this post. It’s a list of 20 memorable moments of her life. I thought it was a great idea, so I tried to write one myself this morning. Maybe because I’ve got about 15 years on her– but my list is really LONG already and I’m not done. I keep remembering things and adding them into the middle. One thing I noticed while reading it over…sadly it seems to be the negative things that stick out in my memories the most. I must try to balance it a little before I dare post it. Everyone will think I’ve had a horrible life and that’s definitely not the case!

So, last night we get to the downtown store and line up in the (long) line at the Customer Service counter. I show the printed copy of my “your order has been filled” email, and the worker bee goes off to the little room around the corner to find our camera. We see an empty box for the same camera behind the counter and the other CS guy says ‘this is what it looks like’ and puts the box on the counter. We discuss how we are going to carry that around all evening (ridiculously large box for a tiny pocket camera) Our CS girl comes back out of the room empty-handed, smiles at us slightly as she walks by and out into the store “I’ll be right back” she says. I realize she’s going out to the camera dept to try to find one on the shelf and I KNOW she isn’t going to find one. The website showed low stock and very few stores with any left.

She’s gone for a while. (we are now late for the event we were attending) The other CS guy says “I know we have one of those locked up” and goes off after CS girl. We stand there for many more long minutes. We see CS girl across the store animatedly chatting to another worker bee. Obviously not work related. We imagine “yeah, I’m going out after work tonight, what are you doing? That’s sweet dude, where did you get your nose-ring?” Blah blah blah. We shift from foot to foot.
Eventually, she saunters back over to the CS dept (empty-handed as we expected) and lays our paper on the counter. “It seems to be gone” she says flatly. Other customer service guy steps in as I say incredulously “Are you kidding me?” He starts tapping on his keyboard and brings up a list of stock. Negative 2. I say “someone sold my camera to another customer?” CS girl says “you have 3 days to pick it up” I say “this is day TWO— here we are” CS guy says, “hmmm, it says there is one at Metrotown store, shall I call them?” I rant and rave a bit about “how could they sell an item that was clearly already sold to another customer?”, etc etc. Jon says something about how they get commission for sales made in the store (unlike online sales) CS guy makes the call….”are you sure? No, Charles-listen- the PINK one. The one with case included….not on the shelf? not in the back? It says you have one left (we are now seriously late for the event we were heading to)….can’t find it? Oh, ok”
He turns to us with a fake, sympathetic look and shrugs. I say “this is the worst customer service I have ever seen” He looks like he wants to shrug again, but restrains himself. He says “the best I can do is sell you a silver one for 10% off” I say “No. I wanted that camera” He mumbles something about throwing in a $25 gift card as well. I think he was scared that I was going to start shouting soon.

We take our USELESS order confirmation paper and walk out.

Today, we’re off to our local PHOTOEXPERT to find the perfect camera. You know what? I really don’t care if I have to pay more. I KNOW they will give me excellent customer service and will probably teach my daughter how to use it if she goes in after her birthday with it.

DOWN with the BIG BOX. Shop the little guy stores….they actually care!

Bonus– Just checked their site and they have the SAME CAMERA there. SAME price as evil big box empire….yeay! Today is a happy day.

Update: Got an email from Future Shop online asking me to fill out a survey about my online purchasing and store pick-up experience. I can’t say I’ve had more fun filling out a survey in a very long time. I’m sure I will not hear back from them, but it was a nice way to vent my frustrations!

So, my dear blog readers. The debate continues. What do you think, colours or whites?
(not the best photography I know….and that carpet…how 80′s is dusty rose? Someday my hardwood, leather or cork floor will come:-)

Anyway…this box was calling to me “rice krispie treats, rice krispie treats…” so I had to bring it home. Am I the only one that thinks it’s weird that some people regularly buy packaged Rice Krispie Treats? This took me about 5 minutes to make–tops. The element on the stove took longer to warm up than it took to make these:-) Now, I can see buying Naniamo Bars, or even Brownies which take a minor amount of skill to make, but Rice Krispie Treats?? C’mon!

(The tray is half gone already)