I have been enjoying making my own lotion, lip balm, deodorant and soaps for a while now. In my enthusiasm, I’ve been sharing them with lots of people. Family, friends, friends of friends, my son’s violin teacher…and the response has been pretty exciting. Everyone offers to buy more, and says “you should sell this stuff!” So, I’m thinking of doing that. I’ve been working on a few recipes to start with and I’ve got a few I’m satisfied with. A couple of my goals include recycled, limited or no packaging and healthy non-petroleum based ingredients. Whenever possible, I’d like to buy my materials locally. 
I am working on labeling – for the bars of soap I gave out at Christmas time, I used brown paper bags that I cut and hand-labeled with a white pen. They looked really nice, if you like the handmade, rustic look, like I do! 
Now, I’ve got a few customers that I haven’t even met. My neighbor has been talking up my lotion and several coworkers want to buy it. I have no idea how much to sell it for! I had made a spreadsheet to track how much it cost me to make each recipe – so I know how much the soap or lotion costs per ounce, to make. I’ve even added a line-item for labor, and figured out costs per ounce with that included. Packaging is a little trickier, since I’ve ordered from a few places and the shipping costs vary so much and I’m not sure how or even if I should pass that on. For now I have settled on what I think is a fair price, but who knows what the customers will think.
I don’t know where this will lead, but if it does take off, I really hope I can make it profitable. I enjoy the time I spend making healthy body care products, but it would be great to actually be paid for my time and make money for my family, creating something good that people love.
This was flubber, in progress. It is neon blue (and a more vibrant blue than is evident here!) but glows yellow-ish in the dark. Very fun!
Here we have glow-in-the-dark neon puffy paint. Creations are drying as I write, before testing glow-in-the-dark success!
And this would be “galaxy” playdough, made with black and blue food coloring, and purple and iridescent glitter. Also fun, but seems to turn your hands an interesting reddish-purple color while you knead it. I’m hoping this last quality disappears when the playdough is room temperature. We shall see.
There is a lot of exciting learning going on – all that comes with a boy that has (finally) become a reader. He’s always loved to look at books (and actually it’s astonishing what he’s been able to figure out without actual reading), but it’s so exciting that he can read them now. He takes such pride in reading aloud to us now! We’ve always read at bedtime – we all curl up in my bed and I read for a good long time. Now, when I’m done, he’ll say “now I can read to you!” and jumps up to get a book. It’s wonderful. And there’s nothing quite like seeing him sitting on his brother’s bed, reading to him.
Soon, I’ll be back with a post that has my 2012 seed list. I’ve added things and removed a few, too. And somehow, my favorite soup beans were left off the order. I spent a morning putting beans in jars (well, jar) and realizing that something like 100 square feet of garden produced about one pint of beans, and really, I don’t know how I can conclude this is reasonable use of valuable garden space. My only excuse is that this is a bean I’ve never seen in a store or co-op, and it is my very favorite soup bean. It’s the Hutterite soup bean – small, greenish white and so lovely. Creamy in soup. So, the question is, do I order them or leave the order as is? I don’t know. I don’t even know if the beans I grew last year were open pollinated or not, so saving some of this pint may not solve the issue for me. Ah well, time will tell.
Now, back to the marble game in the other room. I can’t recommend this little project enough – one of our answers to no snow in the yard is fun, active games in the house. Magnetic darts, trampoline, foosball, ping pong, and marbles keep us all sane when there’s no snow to play in in the yard. I made the marble mat with a piece of leftover flannel from Alec’s Halloween costume. Very simple – make a large circle on it, an ‘x’ in the center, and lines for guides to position the marbles for “Ringer”. A 44″ wide piece of fabric was large enough for a 40″ diameter circle, which is a great playing size.
Thanks for reading!
