Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Springtime chaos. It’s fun, but you know. Chaos.

    Evelyn is obsessed with cows. Cows and butterflies, and flowers and outside.

    Basically she’s obsessed with Springtime.

    “FWOWERS!”

    “COOOOOWS!”

    “BUFFERLIES!”

    “OWWWSIDE!”

    She is over the moon to have a paddock filled with calves and their mothers across the road. She spends a lot of time demanding to go outside and watch the coooows. Failing that, she will stand forlornly at the window until they wander into view before she loses her mind and makes everyone come and look because COOOOWS!

    It’s adorable.

    I showed her Mount Gnomon Farm’s instagram feed last night and she was in her element. FOOD! COWS! SHEEP! PIGS!

    It doesn’t take much to make a two year old happy.

    —

    I spent the morning making soap today (Sweet Vanilla, and Passionfruit) and the afternoon packing soap. Evelyn sat next to me while I bagged soaps and added stickers.

    “I HELP YOU!” over and over again until I realised she was demanding to help, not telling me she loved me or asking for something. Her speech is a little slurry still, but the muscle tone is improving and language leaps are happening.

    She pressed down stickers after I put them on and it was going fantastically until she found a Sharpie on the table and nearly defaced the afternoon’s work while I sorted the pre-ordered soaps from the sellable immediately soaps.

    It could have been a drama, but crisis averted. Mostly. She did shout a liiiiitle bit about the loss of the sharpie, but details.

    —

    It’s looking like our hallway and living room carpet are going to be replaced. A few weeks back a lightbulb exploded molten glass all over the place, leaving burned carpet and melted in glass everywhere. Insurance has been through to make it safe (unfortunately covering molten glass shards with duct tape doesn’t work so well) and they’ve just been in contact to say someone will be out to measure my main two rooms for new carpet.

    On one hand FREAKING AWESOME. It almost makes up for almost having the house burn down (okay, hyperbole, but it definitely burned the carpet and I’m glad Nathan and I were awake with a puking/rotten sick Evelyn at the time, otherwise it would have been even crappier) and the subsequent cut feet as we found all the melted shards.

    On the other hand OH MY GOD. All my soap curing shelves are on the carpet which needs replacing. As is most of our furniture.

    It’s going to be chaos.

    Chaos with a point, but still, chaos.

    I’m torn between a panic attack and happy dancing.

    eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

    —

    New soaps in the shop!

    Cardamom Sandalwood is back in stock with a make over and a new recipe to add even more luxurious bubbles.

    Cardamom Sandalwood Soap

    Up The Garden Path is a springtime smelling floral sensation and absolutely gorgeous pretty at the same time.

    019

    Chocolate Soap

    This only went into the shop this weekend and it’s almost sold out! Smells like brownies, or the best dark chocolate.

    Chocolate Soap

    That’s life for me. How are you?

  • Running a business is hard work. Who’d have thought it?

    Wow, Internet. WOW. Can I just say firstly, the support for our business launch last month was astounding and fabulous and I am so grateful to every single one of you.

    Yes, I know I’ve said all this before, but it bears repeating, because FEELINGS.

    In the middle of all the regular orders, we’ve also had some large wholesale orders popped in to be ready for Christmas. After three weeks of panicky making, I can honestly say that everything ordered is curing and will be ready by mid-November. Thank GOODNESS.

    It was a lot of fun and a lot of work to make that much soap. I swear the soap dishes get it on in the middle of the night and by the time I come around to wash them in the morning there are little baby dishes everywhere. If they’re not having babies I’m not quite sure how I managed to dirty ten moulds, five jugs, three buckets and every single spatula I own over the course of one day. Magic, clearly.

    It’s the school holidays now and this means I have minions home to help pack soap and stick stickers, which is a small consolation in the face of overwhelming Minecraft and the fact SOMEONE keeps changing my Spotify station to Ke$ha.

    Kill me.

    Free time is at a premium and the kids are taking up most of it. Sorry Internet.

    In the meantime, have some soap photos.

    Everyone loves soap photos.

    PS: vanilla lip balm is back in stock, so if you were waiting to buy, here’s your chance!

    Operation Move Branded Soap

    Lavender Swirl Soap

    Cedarwood Soap

  • The launch has been a roaring success

    I opened the soap website on Friday morning, and announced that we were live for sales shortly after. I wasn’t quite prepared for how well we were going to do.

    I know, it sounds odd to admit it, but I was honestly hoping we would sell a little soap, get a little social media support and go on with our lives.

    I did not expect to begin selling out of some products within 24 hours, or that I would suddenly be counting how many bars of soap I had curing and wondering if it was enough.

    So THANK YOU. Thank you for making the first two days of our business opening a roaring success. Thank you for buying soap, sharing our links, tweeting at me, telling your friends. Thank you all so very very much.

    We’d warned our local post office we were opening an online business and that we’d have lots of parcels. She looked at us a bit strangely, but didn’t say much.

    Now we have lots of parcels and Monday morning we’re going to be descending on her tiny country post office with armfuls of things to send. (EXCITE)

    She only has a manual scale however, so Nathan isn’t looking forward to it. I’ve told him to buy the newspaper and sit outside with a coffee while she weighs everything.

    007

    Maybe we can convince her to buy electronic scales.

    Maybe.

    I’m frantically making more soap to keep up with demand, so if there’s something you were interested in and you don’t see it in my shop, email me and I’ll let you know when it will be in stock.

    And finally, look at these soaps I cut this morning!

    This one, Coffee Break, went thicker faster than I expected and I worried it was going to be terribly ugly inside. Big relief to discover it’s quite pretty. It will continue to darken over the next few days until it’s a chocolate colour.

    001

    And this soap was a new fragrance and I am in love. It’s Cashmere and it’s a knock off of a perfume? Or something? It’s delicious anyway.  I have to keep picking it up and smelling it.

    005

    Also, in case you didn’t know, if you buy soap between now and September 19, you go into the draw to win an amazing prize pack.

    So go forth! Buy soap!

    800px-WhiteBG

  • And the business is live!

    800px-WhiteBG

    It’s finally here! The shop is open and launched and I am so very excited.

    Head on over and buy some soap!

    Giveaway:

    As a bonus, everyone who buys soap in the next two weeks gets entered into the draw to win an amazing gift pack:

    Gift Basket

    Contains:

    Chilli Lime Chocolate Block
    Salted Caramel Chocolate
    Torched Macadamia Chocolate
    Dark Chocolate Fudge
    Mocha Fudge
    Apricot Almond Fudge
    After Dinner Mint Fudge
    Raspberry Fudge

    Lily and Ginger Candles – Coffee Date
    Lily and Ginger Candles – Almost Spring
    Lily and Ginger Candles – Black Forest
    Lily and Ginger Candles – Fondue for Two

    Exfoliating Foot Soap
    Orange Blossom and Calendula Soap
    Lemon Meringue Pie Soap
    Cardamom Teakwood Soap
    Roses all the way Soap
    Woods and Bitter Coffee Soap
    Skin Lover Soap
    Shea Butter Soap
    Chocolate Lip Balm
    Vanilla Lip Balm
    Strawberry Lip Gloss

    RRP $140

    Thank you so much to Lily and Ginger Candles, and The Fudge A’Fare for being involved and supporting our launch!

  • You don’t get to speak for me

    Recently I saw a callout for writers to come forward and express interest in doing some sponsored work on a variety of topics. One of those topics was disability, so I put my hand up.

    Skimming through the comments briefly, I saw a number of support workers put their hands up to talk about disability as well and I immediately got shitty.

    The thing is, unless you have a disability, or possibly are the parent of a severely disabled kid, you need to shut up. You aren’t the minority group being spoken about. Your job is merely to shut up and listen.

    In the wake of the Federal changes to how the disability pension was going to be funded for young people, it seemed everyone had an opinion and they were willing to shout it from the rooftops.

    Social workers came forward. Disability support workers. Centrelink workers. That nosy old gossip at the post office. EVERYONE had an opinion.

    “I work with these people and really, this makes it so much harder for them.”

    “I see these people every day and blah blech blah.”

    “There are thousands of these people routing the system and it needs to stop!”

    These people.

    These people.

    I am one of these people and it offends me when people who don’t know what disability is like decide to speak on my behalf. I have a voice and I can use it for myself, thanks.

    It took a long time to come to terms with my disability. The knowledge that slowly my body will start to fail me more and more often is a bitter pill to swallow some days, but I’m one of the lucky ones – I get to put things in place now in order to make my life in five years easier. I have a degenerative condition, I know about it, and I have accepted that.

    I am also the parent of disabled children. I know how hard it is sometimes to step back and let my children speak for themselves – but I am also living in a body very similar to theirs, so I can advocate from the first person perspective of knowing exactly what helps and what doesn’t. And when their experience is different to mine, I shut up and listen to them.

    It’s the same across the board. We need to let people advocate for themselves and stop trying to shout over the top of them because for whatever reason, we believe we know better.

    Here’s the thing: I am disabled. Not stupid. My joints don’t work, but my brain does.

    Disability is a complex and nuanced thing. There are as many different experiences as there are diagnoses and so it’s important that we listen to the people who know what they’re talking about. As much as that social worker believes she understands how disabled people live, work, and think, unless she also has a disability, she can’t explain from anything except a second hand perspective. And as long as I can talk, I firmly FIRMLY believe that I get to talk for myself.

    Activism is hard work and it often leaves me curled up in an exhausted ball resembling nothing so much as a soggy cardboard box. But eventually I have to stand up and point out that I am disabled and you don’t get to speak for me unless you are disabled too.

    We have strong amazing voices in our disabled community. It’s important that everyone else shuts up and lets the people who know what they’re on about speak.