My first commission!

Someone who saw me knitting it loved Eric's scarf so much that he's commissioned me to make the same exact one for him!  So... my very first knitting sale!

... once it's done.

Shared with:

The Holiday Gala - and a SALE!

Today we were on the road again, at the Minerals Resort and Spa in Vernon, in what's become our usual booth, but with some new touches...

Like that nifty banner on the front of the table, and the sign up top.  This one...

The gift baskets were a hit today.  In fact, one woman bought a Men's Gift Basket for her son, and then said, "I really don't want to go to the mall; what else do I need?"  She proceeded to purchase a bunch of additional items, and then announced triumphantly that she'd completed her holiday shopping without having to hit a mall, which gave us an idea I'll get to in a minute.

This was also the first time we had our Dead Sea mud masks out in person.  People loved them.  Loved.

Cool, right?  Know what's cooler?  That idea I mentioned... a holiday sale!

From now through December 19, all of our seasonal items are 20% off!

How great is that if you've still got some last minute holiday shopping to do?  Our Home for the Holidays candles, Home for the Holidays Bath Salts, and Autumn Harvest candles are all 20% off, just in time for you to buy stocking stuffers, Secret Santa gifts, teacher gifts, and anything else you need.

From now through December 19, all gift baskets are 15% off!

The Men's Basket and any custom baskets, all 15% off, just email us and we'll plan the perfect basket for your friend or family member!

Plus, we'll get any orders out immediately and can ship directly to your recipient if you'd like!

Have fun shopping!

Father's Day Sale!

For one week, and one week only at Reef Botanicals:

Our new "Father's Day gift baskets" are 25% off, costing only $30 instead of the regular $40.  The temporary price is already reflected on the site.  Just order one and we can ship it directly to dad, or to you so you can see his reaction when you hand it to him!

This basket is packed full with:
*One Smooth Operator shaving soap, scented with lavender.
*One matching Smooth Operator shaving oil.
*One Clean Cut shaving soap, scented with patchouli, lavender, fir, and rosemary.
*One matching Clean Cut shaving oil.
*One Mashed In:  Spring Seasonal, our luxurious beer soap, made with Sam Adams beer, crushed hops, and ground barley for a wonderful scent of baking bread.
*One sage green and very soft organic cotton washcloth.

It is the ultimate in pampering for the men in your life!  Dad can enjoy a shower with our amazing beer soap, and then get down to shaving... a soak with a nice hot washcloth, some skin-loving pre-shave oil, and then the amazing lather of our luxurious shaving soaps that contain spa-quality Rhassoul clay to avoid the need for gels and glycerines.

The basket will continue to be available long after Father's Day, for the regular price of $40, so it'll be great for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, or any other gift-giving event... but get it now for Father's Day for just $30!

As if that wasn't enough, the sale continues:


Every item in the Reef Botanicals Men's Line is on sale for one week, buy two items, get one item of equal or lesser value for free.  Just purchase two items and then let us know in the paypal comments or via email what you'd like for free!.

You can choose our Smooth Operator Shaving & Bath Soap.

Or our matching Smooth Operator Shaving Oil.

If you like your shaves a little spicier, try our Clean Cut Shaving & Bath Soap.

Or our matching Clean Cut Shaving Oil.

For a terrific bath or shower experience, there's our Mashed In:  Spring Seasonal, soap made with Sam Adams, hops, and barley, and scented with just the barest touch of cedar.  This one's my favorite!

Get three of the same thing, or mix & match!

Sale ends at midnight on June 15.

A Bit of Random

I've just gotten back from celebrating National Doughnut Day, which means I got a free doughnut with my iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts today.  And no, this wasn't a marketing ploy by Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme to all get us to go buy drinks, it's actually a real day!  Apparently, it was started in 1938 by the Salvation Army, to honor the women who had served doughnuts to World War I soldiers.  Pretty neat.

It's all day today, so be sure & get your free treat!

And we've got some new flowers in the yard.  It's lily time, apparently.  It's tough, because it's so incredibly hot that these pretty pink ones are fading almost as soon as they bloom.  They're in a spot that gets direct sunlight, so the deep pink is gone pretty much within a day; I think these two bloomed this morning or late yesterday and were much darker before I got a chance to bring out my camera.

Unfortunately, you can see behind them where the ones that bloomed a day or two earlier are already turning brown.  It's hot out there!

We've also got these red ones, which are doing better behind the house.

As of today, I noticed the orange ones had bloomed on the side of the house.  They're brand new and still doing well, despite the heat.

Of course, don't forget we've got some new products for the guys and we'll soon be having a Father's Day sale!

It's for boys, but I like it.

Eric has developed a pre-shave oil, just like you find in the high-end stores and at the fancier barber shops.

It's the first step in a pampering, close shave.  The oil is used before shaving to soften the beard and prepare the skin for a close and comfortable shave without leaving an oily residue.  It's ideal for men with sensitive skin, ingrown hair, razor burn, or tough beards.

They're formulated with only natural, healthy, skin-loving oils and essential oils for scent.

Why do I like it?  Because after Eric soaks his face with a hot, wet washcloth, then uses his pre-shave oil, and then his shaving soap to shave, he's got a really smooth face and it doesn't scratch me when I try to kiss him, that's why!

He's done two scents so far, to match our current line of shaving soaps.  That means there's a Clean Cut Shaving Oil, made with patchouli, fir, lavender, and rosemary essential oils and there's a Smooth Operator Shaving Oil, made with just lavender essential oil.

You can find them on their own on the Reef Botanicals site, or as part of our special Father's Day gift basket, also on the site.  The basket's got one Clean Cut shaving soap and matching oil, one Smooth Operator shaving soap and matching oil, one Mashed In bar soap, and one sage green, very soft organic cotton washcloth for that great pre-oil soak before shaving.

The baskets are currently listed at $40, but look for a sale from June 7-15, when they'll be 25% off!

This post is part of the "I Made It" Blog Party at "Everything Etsy."

We're Beer Snobs

Really.

And it's pretty funny on my end, considering my "start" in drinking beer.  I know most people won't believe me, but I honestly didn't drink alcohol until I was of legal age, which was the summer before my senior year of college.  Even then, I didn't really drink much.  I tried some beer at school parties.  I think Coors Light was the popular one, so you can understand why I hated beer.  Because I really despised beer, I drank only mixed drinks, and only one per semester.  Seriously, at an after-finals party each semester of my senior year, I had one single daquiri.

It wasn't until my second semester, second year of law school (Did I mention I'm also a lawyer?) that I first liked a beer.  After finals that night, my friends Lisa, Sheau-Wu and I went into the city looking for music, any music.

[Note:  Being from NJ and going to Brooklyn Law School, any time I say "the city," you can assume I mean Manhattan.]

We found a guy on the corner in The Village, handing out flyers for the Mondo Cane Blues Bar.

[It was on Thompson Street, and sadly, is no longer there.  It was my favorite place to go for a long time.]

Lisa, Sheau-Wu and I looked at each other and shrugged.  Sounded good.  The band playing that night was Slapmeat Johnson and the Titans.  Yeah, I know, I know.  But I became a huge blues fan that night, solely because of that band.  They were phenomenal.  I can't possibly convey here the talent that band had.  I also discovered that I could like beer - an ice cold Budweiser.  It just went with the atmosphere, you know?

I know what you're thinking.  Bud?  And she calls herself a beer snob?  You're right, but keep reading.

I became friends with some people who were more knowledgeable about beers.  They introduced me to non-American varieties, the kinds that most starving law students didn't bother with because they couldn't afford them.  I discovered nut brown ales, honey brown ales, cream ales.  By the time I went to Ireland in 1998, I found that my favorite beer ever was Caffrey's Irish Ale.  Sadly, like the Mondo Cane, Caffrey's no longer exists.  If you've ever tried Tetley's English Ale, it's close.  I also later discovered the lovely American microwbrew.

What's the point of this all-too-long history?

Well, I became a beer snob.  I also married a beer snob.  In fact, he brews his own beer!  Good stuff, too, I might add, very good stuff.  He does a lot of research (and I mean reading, not just drinking, so quit smirking, people).

So when we decided to make our beer soap, ...

Wait.  Did she just say beer soap?

As I was saying, when we decided to make our beer soap, we knew we had to use the good stuff.  I now present Mashed In:  Spring Seasonal.

This soap is made with the usual stuff, but with Sam Adams Noble Pils replacing the water!  Oh yes, my friends, the very, very good (Really!) Sam spring seasonal is the liquid in this soap.  Also in the soap is a bunch of crushed and fragrant hops.  For those not in the know, hops are actually flowers, so they're soft and really nice.  For exfoliation, we've ground up some Pale Two Row Malted Barley, and that's in there too.

This is now my favorite of our soaps, hands down.  Yeah, it's part of our "Men's Line," but I'm not kidding.  It's my favorite.  Scented with just a touch of cedarwood essential oil, it smells like sweet grain, almost like baking bread, but without the yeast.  Who doesn't like the smell of baking bread?  Hands?  Anyone?  Yeah, didn't think so.

Check it out.  It's a limited run, so you've got a limited time.  Now, that doesn't mean we won't continue to have awesome beer soaps.  It just  means that our beer soaps will be seasonal!  Each season, we'll use a different beer base.  Neat, huh?

Why "Mashed In"?

Says Eric:  "Mashing in" is the process in beer brewing where the grains and water (called liquor when brewing) are combined at a specific temperature to extract the sugars from the grain.  In extracting the sugars, a sweet liquid called wort (pronounced "wert") is created, which is then fermented to produce beer.  The process isn't so different from combining our ingredients at a specific temperature to create soap, so we thought "Mashed In" would be the perfect name for this unique soap.

Meanwhile, don't forget about that Shampoo-Naming Contest!

One for the Boys

We have come up with our first soap for men - a shaving soap!

When I say "we," mind you, I'm speaking loosely. I really should be saying Eric, since he did this one nearly solo. He researched it and worked out the recipe, he chose the scent, and he actually made it nearly all himself.

We started to make it, you see, mixed the basic ingredients, got them into the crock pot, started to cook them and stir... and then I got the call that my sister was in labor and had been for several hours. Yes, labor.

So at a quarter to 11 the other night, I dashed off to the hospital while Eric continued to make soap. My sister had the baby at 2:47 a.m., and I stayed with her and her husband visiting until 7:30 a.m. or so. I was demolished by then, and Eric was just getting up for work as I climbed into bed for a few hours.

The soap was already in the mold and curing.

Scented spicily with fir, rosemary, lavender, and patchouli essential oils, this is also our first round soap!

It lathers like crazy from the combination of oils used, perfect for shaving.  Plus, it's made with Rhassoul Clay, which has been used for over 1400 years as a natural beauty treatment for skin and hair, and shea butter, which also makes it a wonderful bath bar.

Personally, I love that we tried round bars too.  They just look so nifty!  They were... interesting to work out, though.  Removal from the mold was a heck of a process that included lots of trial and error, freezing the soap and a hammer.  There were times we might have looked like an Abbott and Costello routine, in fact.  But the result is definitely worth it.