It's All About Me

New blog home...

We've been really busy for the past few weeks. Anyway, I have decided to change over to Wordpress. While I like Typepad's interface, it's time for a change.

My new blog name is Panda Chronicles, and it can be found here. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm liking Wordpress' features and flexibility. So, come on by and stay a while.

The Big 37

Another year has gone by and here I am...another year older.

We're in Arizona again, this time we'll be checking out the Grand Canyon and Sedona this weekend. Nancy's friend, Janet, is in town visiting, so we all decided to make a weekend out of it. We're staying at an inn in Bellemont, which is about 20 miles from Flagstaff.

Depeche Mode

The Raveonettes just finished their set. Waiting for DM...

Brining must be the "new black"

I have made plans a while back to brine our turkey this year for Thanksgiving. I got my brining mix from Williams-Sonoma a few weeks ago. It seems lately, the news and magazine have been touting giving turkeys a brine bath is the latest and greatest thing.

I started the brine yesterday afternoon. This year, we decided to have just a turkey breast, since a whole turkey was quite a bit. I have to say, brining the bird certainly kicks ass. What's nice about it is that the texture of the breast meat after cooking is very similar to dark meat. It was very moist and juicy.

Now, if you excuse me, I need to get running. We're going to Glendale tomorrow to catch Depeche Mode and I need to start packing. But not after a quick break on the PS2.

Exhausted...

Craft fair is over and done with. We're heading back to Vegas now. We're on the 15 heading north, going through the Murrietta area as I type this. Looks like it'll be another late night for us.

I'll update more after I get some more rest.

I nixxed the Dream loaf

I don't know if Dream would be a good seller, so I've decided to forget about it. Last night I made six bars each of Juniper Breeze, Pink Sugar, and Romance Silver...all "types." I just got done wrapping those up. I still need to slice and wrap my Plumeria, OHM, and AP&J loaves.

I'm going to clean out my workstation now and switch on over to the bath fizzies. I need to give them time to dry. It'll prolly take me about 4 hours to redo all of them, then I'll be switch back to soaps.

Status so far...

Today, I churned out so far:

12 reed diffuser kits
18 bottles of edible perfume
1 loaf of Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap

In the works:

1 loaf of Plumeria
1 loaf of Dream "type"

Looks like I'll be doing the bath tablets either tonight or early tomorrow.

It's that time again...

I'm a week from my craft fair, so I've been soapin' like a fiend. Actually, I'm telling myself that Tuesday will be my deadline to finish everything.

I actually started making bubbling bath tarts last Saturday night. It's a good thing I started on those early because they're not drying properly. I'm going to have to redo them again. grrrr...

They sure look pretty though...

They bubble and fizz just fine. The problem is that they're not drying as rock hard as I would like them to. Oh well...more for meeeee!

I'll have to make another batch later and adjust my recipe accordingly. I think I know where I went wrong. Heck...I even bought a scale so that I can weigh out my ingredients instead of just using visual measurements.

I would say I'm about half way done with my soaping. I plan to finish the rest of the soaps by tonight. I would like to start on soy whip body creams, foaming bath butter, soy body glaze, and the rest of the lotions and potions by tomorrow. Hopefully, by Monday, I finish all that up and start working on packaging. Walt needs to be in SD on Thursday for meetings, so that means I would like to have everything loaded in the car by Wednesday evening. During my past few craft shows, I'd be up till the wee hours of the morning the day of the show. I would literally get about 1 - 2 hours of sleep because I'd be up late labeling and packaging, etc.

This year, I will nix the printed brochures. They have never bought me any repeat customers in the past. I plan to have business cards, so if anyone wants to check out what I offer, they can download the brochure from there. Besides, there are products that I'm testing out the market on. A printed brochure would kind of limit me to what's only in the brochure. At least with an electronic one, I can update fragrances, products, and prices on the fly.

I won't be doing jewelry this year. The last craft fair I was in, there were at least 8 other jewelry makers there. I was totally shocked that I managed to sell 2 pieces at the show. I'm also doing a different approach with my product sizes as well. Soaps have always been a good seller, but it seems at the craft fair, lotions and shower gels don't really move at all. I think it may have something to do with the size. I've been carrying 8 oz sizes in the past. This year, I will be downsizing them. The bottles and jars will be 4 and 2 ozs. I'll be promoting smaller items to be used as stocking stuffers. I plan not to stay behind the table this time, but instead I'll be up front, marketing my ass off.

I'm totally changing my approach this year and I'm back in the bath & body game here. I'm starting to get a little burned out with print and web design, but this is giving me another creative outlet that I constantly need.