Soapmaking

New carpet and new directions

by Veronica on November 27, 2014

We got new carpet yesterday. We’ve lived in this house for almost seven years, just dealing with the crappy carpet hand we’d been dealt and suddenly, care of an exploding light bulb raining molten glass all over the living area and hallway, we get new carpet. It’s a bit weird. NEW STUFF. In our really old falling apart house. Something NEW AND SHINY.

It had been a while since we looked at our dining room floor. Out of sight, out of mind is a great thing when you know you’ve got giant holes in the floor covered with random bits of board, but yesterday when we tore everything up it was hard to ignore the giant holes.

Even harder to ignore was the corpse of the cat which had gone missing a few days previously. Poor Amy, she’d been holding out hope that some kind person had thought Alley was lost and picked her up.

Alley, who was my least favourite cat, has, in death, made her way to the top of the favourite cats list. Mostly because she died right underneath the only bit of under the house we can actually access. Smart move, cat.

But I digress.

Giant holes in the floor. See here for when we first discovered them, a really long time ago oh god why have we been procrastinating fixing this floor.

The holes were ahem slightly worse than that old post shows, care of people occasionally falling through the rotted floor boards and making new, larger holes.

Don’t judge me. If you could ignore holes in your floor by covering them with shitty carpet and furniture you would too.

SO. We removed the cat corpse, had the carpet laid through the entire living area and hallway and were given strict instructions to fix the dining room floor so they could finish laying the rest of the carpet another day.

Procrastination always takes a back step to the reality of hey you could lose a small child or three under your floor and fix it so you can have shiny new carpet you procrastinating idiots.

I had not planned to spent a lot of money buying new flooring for the dining room this fortnight, but hey, needs must and can I please just cry in the corner now.

WOO. New carpet and debt! YAY US.

ANYWAY.

I deleted my veronica@somedaywewillsleep.com email address today. Up to 500 spam emails were coming through a day (A FREAKING DAY) and my email spam filter wasn’t catching all of it. Now it’s gone. Deleted. If you want to email me veronica [at] veronica foale [dot] come still works, as does my business email veronica [at] veronica foale essentials [dot] com [dot] au . Just a heads up in case your emails to me start bouncing because god knows I am so popular these days.

And finally, if you’re looking for something AMAZING to give as a Christmas gift this year, may I recommend soap?

Handmade soap is gorgeous, good for your skin, smells amazing, and is good for your soul. You know you want it.

Use coupon code WELOVEXMAS at the checkout for 15% off up until the 18th December.

To make sure your order reaches you we recommend ordering no later than December 13.

Cool Mint

Energy

Passionfruit

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

On not blogging and bath salts

by Veronica on October 20, 2014

in Soapmaking

There was a point recently when I realised, I’m not really a blogger anymore. And it’s sad, a little, because I love blogging and I love where blogging has taken me.

But after seven years, I’m tired. I jumped on the PR roundabout and fell off again 18 months later when I realised I didn’t enjoy selling my space to companies looking to make a quick impression and an even quicker dollar. I told stories, and then didn’t again. My children grew up fast, too fast, too fast to share their stories anymore.

It takes a while to readjust. From mummy-blogger to what-am-I-even-now-blogger.

A soap maker, a small business owner, a work from home mother, an entrepreneur, a maker, a creator.

I grew a brand, abandoned it, and now I’m growing another one.

I’m enjoying myself and that’s all that really matters though, isn’t it?

That’s where I went wrong with blogging. I worked too hard at trying to be something, someone. I got bored and drifted away. Now people don’t even know I have a blog. It’s almost comforting.

—

I made chocolate soap restocks today and my house smells like chocolate and saponification. I’ve got 60 soaps to pack and label once I write this, dinner to cook, children to love on.

Life is full. Life is good.

—

Bath salts! Oh god, bath salts. YOU GUYS.

Do you know how much fun bath salts are to make? SO MUCH FUN. I’m in love.

Clearly I’ve added bath salts to my shop and they’re awesome. There’s spearmint and eucalyptus for soaking your feet in, margarita scented for awesomeness, and all the usual suspects.

I *may* have spent a full day testing bath salts. It was lovely. They are lovely. Australian sea salt and Epsom salts combined to help sore muscles.

Bath Salts 033

So much fun. And pretty to photograph too.

Everything is coming off the curing shelves in great waves at the moment. I packaged 60 soaps last night, and I’ll do another 60 soon. I think tomorrow there might be another 100 to pack, but I’m trying not to look until I have to design the labels for printing. Preorders are slowly being filled and everything is good.

—

I think I’m okay with being not just a blogger any more, you know.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

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

by Veronica on October 13, 2014

in Evelyn, Soapmaking

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.

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

Chocolate Soap

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

That’s life for me. How are you?

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

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

by Veronica on October 2, 2014

in Soapmaking

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

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The launch has been a roaring success

by Veronica on September 14, 2014

in Soapmaking

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