I am building this blog, so I can give you all a little window into my world.. I feel strange, thinking that I hate advertisement. I deeply dislike adds and or commercials of items that promise to change your life. They make so many exciting claims about their products. I don't believe anything anymore. You know they exaggerate, and most products you wear or eat, have varying results. Imagine me looking at a Victoria's Secret poster, and buying lingerie. When I put it on, my feelings are conflicted. I am disappointed that it didn't improve my shape, and I don't look remotely like the model in the poster. But, I see myself in a different light, and remember that I have to love my body, and if I want it to change, I must take action myself. So it's not a magical solution, but motivation and the feeling of improvement.
I can go on and on with adds, but instead, I will make you laugh a little. I just want to add that building this blog is making me feel like I am selling part of myself, well, I guess I am. My soaps have a little of my heart put into them.
I will strive to be honest!!
WHY SOAP?
I enjoy making soap, it makes me feel good to think that they can make people happy. I myself remember when I was in Iraq (Army). I came back to my room after a work day, and there was something that always made me feel better, no matter what the day was like. I would go shower, and come back to my room, to go to bed. The scent of that shower products I used would stay with me and my sheets smelled amazing. It helped me feel relaxed and ready to sleep. I still do this at home, every night.
I want other people to experience that. After a hard day's work, wash off all the ickies that you caught along the way (spiritually, like negative energy, stress, exhaustion). Wash it all off, and feel refreshed and beautiful.
I started with bath bombs some years ago, but it seems many people don't have the time and/or patience, to soak in the bath. So I made other things and left bath bombs behind. I have made body butters, lip balm, hair serum (that I use every day) foot sugar scrubs, coffee facial scrubs and other things. Lately, I mostly focus on soaps, when I start growing a bit more, I will add facials, and foot scrubs.
My goal is to grow my business from the ground up. I want to continue enjoying soap making, so I will go forward as best as I can. I work during the day, so I steal some time off my evenings or weekends to make soap. Wrapping and labeling are taking up more time, so I am keeping those to a simple presentation.
I really want to push forward and grow with time. I want to cut down my work hours eventually, and spend more time making soaps. It may be years before this, because right now, I have to prioritize. Mortgage payments come first. I want to see if we can pay more than the regular payments, to get the house paid off sooner. We bought this house while still deployed in Iraq. I looked for homes online, and spoke to the realtor through e-mails. I did all the paperwork, and then had to go to an office, that had the only machine that could scan and fax my paperwork. It was exciting for us, because we were both coming home to nothing. We had given up the home we were renting when we left.
I am grateful for all that God has provided, and all the help my guardian Angel has given. We keep pushing through. We had a hard time finding work when we came back home. My husband was deployed three times, one when we both went, and two more. After each return, employment was eluding him. It was so depressing to see him get turned down because our experience in the Army did us no good out here. He signed up for the Army as Military Police when he was 18, so that was his life, (he retired from the Army a few years ago). A few years back, we were hitting walls. So many years of experience he had, had no relevance here, as they put it, "In the real world". Yes, I was turned down many times as well, I was told that phrase, I will never forget that. Now we are catching up on home repairs and everything else we missed.
Hubby has a job he loves, and I do as well. But I still want to make more soap. It expands creativity and lowers stress levels. The best part is seeing people smile and light up when they find a scent they like. Last night, I had people that couldn't decide on which one to pick, they liked most of them at once. Choosing only a few was difficult. I need to get out more often! it was fun.
This was the basket I took out last night.
