a kid on christmas ( in the 70s-80s) heh
Alright… looks like I’ve managed to squeeze some time in to finally get a blog post out - however there will be one following this one which will go over in detail all of the products we are releasing on small business saturday!
this blog is about the inspiration behind this years products... and if youre too busy stuffing turkeys and making pies then please, dont worry about this one... but do keep an eye out for the next one!
this year was a bit different from the years past for a few reasons.. the first being obtaining ingredients. Wow did I struggle. I mean between natural disasters ruining crop and tariffs trashing imports.. I all but lost my mind trying to figure out what I could get and what I could make as these things caused either unavailability or skyrocketing prices. Both things sucked equally! lol
so.. early on in the year I knew I wanted to do some really classic old fashioned holiday stuff. But I didn’t know doing so was going to end up making me revisit my childhood holidays so much. Which, I actually really enjoyed. It wound up leading me to go through old photographs, talk to my siblings about their Xmas memories, and wanting to go back in time - to a simpler time. And i hope that’s what the products I bring to you this year do for you as well.
My dad.. LOVED Christmas. He’d always wind up getting a tree that was way too big and had to be cut in order to fit in the house ( until my mom got her way with the white tree that got tucked into the closet the rest of the year) but once my daughter was born my dad was back to getting his real tree, ahem, his real big tree and even found some old school lights to go on it.
I asked my siblings what memories stood out to them as children … we all shared the same memory of my mom with her dark black coffee and the smell of her cigarettes …( likely from being Santa all night not sleeping much) and needing more of both as we woke her up with little to no sleep.
my sister reminded us of how every year my dad would stuff the fireplace so full of wrapping paper he’d nearly burn the house down. Yes, this was pretty much tradition. I can hear my mom now… “ DAVID!!” As flames were pouring out of the fireplace! Haha
In our house, Santa always put the candy canes on our tree, filled our stockings and always left our gifts from him unwrapped… the wrapped gifts were from mom n dad. And on xmas eve.. my mom always made us some sort of little dessert treat in these gray colored Tupperware dessert cups ( btw I loved those things hahaha as soon as I’d see her walking into the room with them I knew there was something awesome I was about to eat! lol ) as we watched the classic shows... Charlie Brown, Rudolph, the grinch, Emmett otters jug band Christmas… etc..
Xmas day we always looked forward to going to gramma butz house. My mom’s side of the family was where we usually spent Xmas dinner.. and that family was the warmest, sweetest, kindest, fun family you can imagine… if those things were money, everyone in that house was a billionaire! At some point the entire house was part of an inside joke or just hysterically laughing at something or other. It was just always so great to be there.
The clock ticking on the wall, my grandpas big green leather chair, the ceramic tree and its colorful lights, the smell of my aunt Leslie and Eileen’s amazing baked goods.. uncle butch’s pipe tobacco. All of that amazing food… the sound of my dad carving the ham and turkey.. I can still see the bowl of tree nuts and their little metal cracker thingies.. right next to the old fashioned candies. I’m sort of brought to tears just writing this because I can hear all of their voices.. talking, laughing… and so many of them are now gone.
I was born in 75… so the best of my Xmas memories are from the late 70s-mid 80s. And I think this years release is going to reflect a lot of that. I kinda got sucked into this childhood time of mine and i let it become the product. Think kraynaks, think 70s-80s, think old fashioned classic Christmas.
Right.. I could go on forever but I know you’re all busy this time of year.. I know I certainly am!
lol so.. let’s get to it. ….
the soaps being released …
as I mentioned earlier… expect a lot of classic Christmas this year. I’m going to do a follow up blog post with just the soaps / products and their descriptions following this post so keep an eye out for that!
as usual, there were some real challenges this season ..
in all of the years I’ve been doing this, I’m confident in saying this was one of the top three most challenging ones. Certain things I needed to make multiple products on my list just simply weren’t available at all .. had a couple of packaging issues as well.. and other thing that were available literally tripled and quadrupled in price … and well.. at this point … if I wanted to keep the lights on ..I would not have a choice but to have that reflect in the price of what I make and I just wasn’t willing to do that as everything else in the world is dang expensive enough already!
my biggest issue of the whole season was … ughhhhh and I’m still just argh.. I can’t get over how this all went down but long story short..
I ordered a new ingredient a few months ago. I decided to test it in one of the mini bar batches.. and as soon as I got the soap out of the mold.. i knew I needed to make some full sized bars with it... however, when i placed my second order.. well, it just wasnt arriving. in fact ... it just kept... not... arriving, and in fact in fact, it just arrived TODAY at 3pm!!! sooo yeah, although im out of time to turn it into soap, i still have time to turn it into something great! i will be for sure burning some serious midnight oil tonight. i dont really have a choice. so if i look tired on saturday when you see me, well, thats because i am. lol
and although a lot was going wrong, there was also a lot going right!!! im really happy with the lineup this year... and i really hope you all love everything as much as i do. i have a SURPRISE BAR that nooooooooo one knows about --- that wont be disclosed until you start walking through the doors on saturday :) i also have a couple of surprise products aside from soap that we've kept on the down low too!
that said, i truly hope all of the magic of my childhood christmas comes through in everything i made this year and i hope it makes you as happy as my christmas as a kid did for me!!
until next,
-heidi