Thanksgiving Song

Was looking for a funny alternative to Adam Sandler's Turkey Song to post on my Facebook page, and came across this beautiful song.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Stock Up on Black Orchid!

Our perfumer has informed us they have discontinued Black Orchid (Tom Ford Type). Our supply is limited, and once it is gone, it is gone forever. Be sure to stock up now!

Shana Tova!

A very cute Rosh Hashana greeting courtesy of the Muppets. Wishing those that celebrate a very Happy, Healthy, & Sweet New Year.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Yeah, I know it's been awhile since I've blogged. Earlier this summer I underwent surgery for a twisted colon. The recovery has been slow and painful. On the plus side, I've been able to get out of doing the laundry and carrying groceries as the doctor told me not to do any heavy lifting.

How have you been spending your summer?

Soap Swirls

I've always admired the beautifully colored swirls that many of my fellow soapmakers add to their soaps. After reading about how swirls are created and watching videos (Christy Rose of KBShimmer's video was especially inspirational), I finally attempted a swirl. I had some blue powder colorant (I don't know if it was a mica or oxide as there was no label on the jar), that I had received in a goodie bag. When the soap looked emulsified I took a teaspoon of the powder & mixed it with one ounce of avocado oil that was part of my soap recipe. I separated about a cup of soap from the batch, poured the colorant in, and stirred well. The soap was a beautiful shade of blue. I used the swirling method that Christy showed in her video. Everything looked great. I went to take a peak at the soap a few hours later and the color had grayed out. Even though the color didn't turn out they way I had hoped, I think the swirl came out pretty decent for a first attempt.

What do you think?

Cosmetic Colorants

While doing some research on soap colorants, I came across a very interesting blog post from Kaila Westerman. (Scroll down to her post dated February 4, 2010.) Kaila is well known in the soapmaking industry as an expert on cosmetic colorants. Kaila raises some very interesting points about using fruit and vegetable pigments as colorants in cosmetics. What do you think?

Sniffapalooza!

If you’re a fragrance fan, you’ll want to check out Sniffapalooza’s Spring Fling to be held this weekend, April 10-11th in New York City.

Sniffapalooza is an event-based group of fragrance aficionados that unites perfume enthusiasts from around the world. The Spring Fling is a jam packed weekend where attendees will meet perfumers, representatives from fragrance houses, fragrance journalists, authors and celebrities. Some of the new fragrance launch previews will include Atelier Cologne, Balenciaga, Voyage D'Hermes, Donna Karan Iris, Prada Tuberose, Annick Goutal Ninfeo Mio, and Henri Bendel Fine Fragrance Collection.

They don’t call this Sniffapalooza for nothing! Some of the sniffing and sampling venues include Bergdorf Goodman, Takashimaya (the legendery store will closes its doors in June), Henri Bendel, the new Krigler Perfumery at The Plaza, where Sniffapaloozites will meet Ben Krigler, sample the line, and watch the launch of Manhattan Rose 44 candle & Extraordinaire Camelia 209, Krigler's first new fragrance creation in 10 years, to celebrate their 105th anniversary. Bond No. 9 is a very hot and trendy fragrance house. While at Bond No. 9, participants will have the opportunity to sample Bond No. 9's newest scents, High Line and Montauk and try their new body line.

A master class will be conducted at the Anna Sui boutique by fragrance specialist Leah Dean. In addition to the class, attendees will also get to witness the exclusive launch of Anna Sui Rock Me Summer of Love.

Other highlights include The Fragrance Foundation presenting the FiFi Awards consumer voting & their 'One Mighty Drop’ new ad campaign, Julian Levy presenting Osmoz.com's Les Coulisses de Parfum fragrance kits, and the Sephora team with new launches.

There’s still time to register for the event via PayPal. For questions contact Karen Adams at kadams@sniffapalooza.com.

Happy sniffing!

Scent as Design

If you're in New York City on Friday, March 26th, you might want to check out a daylong symposium on Scent as Design to be held at The New School's Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues), Manhattan.

You can learn more about the event here.

Special thanks to Kayla Fioravanti of Essential Wholesale for tweeting about this event.

Great Computer Diagnostic Tool

I won't bore you with all the computer problems we had even after getting a new hard drive. Fortunately a guy at our computer user group told us about Hiren's Boot CD. If your computer crashes, the Hiren's disk allows you to boot up your computer. It also contains a slew of diagnostic tools like hard drive recovery, hard drive backup, RAM testing, antivirus, anti-spyware, partition tools, and a whole lot more.

Smelly Jellies Now 20% Larger!

You Scent Me's smelly jellies (reusable air fresheners) are now 20% larger! They're great to use in places where candles aren't allowed like dorm rooms and hospital rooms. Smelly jellies are available in all your favorite You Scent Me fragrances.

Wasabi Becomes #1 Selling Fragrance!

You Scent Me has a new #1 selling fragrance -- Wasabi! Wasabi is composed of refreshing top notes of eucalyptus, ginger and peppermint, grounded with thyme and the faintest touch of amber and musk. You can order bath and body products in Wasabi, as well as 51 other scrumptious scents at You Scent Me .

How's Everybody Doing?

Hope everyone had a great holiday season and that the new year brings you and your loved ones health and prosperity. Blogging time was put on hold in order to fill orders and work on some soapy holiday projects.

Of course it also didn't help that our computer was also infected by a nasty trojan.dropper virus. This nasty bugger found its way past our firewall, anti-virus software, and anti-malware software. We went on computer forums and followed all the steps to clean an infected computer. While all our diagnostic software scans came up clean, we kept getting popups about this nasty worm. It got so bad that Windows wasn't able to boot up. Our computer came pre-installed with Windows XP, so we did not have a Windows disk. Still, we were luckier than most. Steve happened to be at a meeting of our computer user group when they handed out CDs with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a free operating system. It allowed us to boot up our computer and allowed us to get any files that hadn't already been backed up, off the system. (You can also do the same thing if you make yourself a rescue disk.) Good thing too, as we had taken our computer to one of our computer guru friends. After valiantly working on our computer for five hours, our hard drive was pronounced dead. We have a new hard drive, but our computer is still acting strange, like today, it lost its internet connection three times. Right now we're so fed up that both of us want to throw the computer out the window (pun intended). If my husband's livelihood didn't depend on a PC environment, I'd switch to a Mac in a heartbeat.