Real Luxury

Ever go to a real spa? One of those places, I mean, where they use all the fancy salts and seaweed wraps and spend hours (and many, many of your dollars) using these really weird-sounding ingredients to pamper you? And they work! I mean, seriously, who'd think that salt could ease your aching muscles and skin conditions?  To be fair, probably not any salt does.  I wouldn't suggest taking the salt shaker off your kitchen table and dumpin the contents into your next bath, for instance.  But salt from the Dead Sea, that's a different story.

Did you know that the Dead Sea is the saltiest body of water in the world?  The salt concentration is actually so heavy that it can keep anyone afloat, even people who have trouble floating anywhere else.  No kidding.  And the salt from the Dead Sea is different from any other sea salt.  Whereas most sea salt is approximately 90% sodium, Dead Sea salt is only 10% sodium.  The rest is comprised of various beneficial, even essential, minerals including magnesium, potassium, calcium, and bromine.

The best way to reap the benefits of the salt is probably to go have a soak in the Dead Sea itself, and many do make the trip.  Not everyone can afford to take the money or time to go to that beautiful location, tucked between Israel and Jordan, though.

This is why people spend the crazy amounts of money they do at spas, using products containing Dead Sea salts and reaping the benefits here at home.

And then seaweed?  Who figured out that seaweed was beneficial to the skin too?  Don't get me wrong, I love my sushi, but sea kelp as a skin regimen?  It just looks so... seaweedy.  It's the real deal, though!  It's high in vitamin and mineral content, as well as essential fatty acids and chlorophyll for detoxification.  Plus, it's got a natural elasticity that makes it ideal in cutting-edge anti-wrinkle beauty regimens.  It confers its elasticity to the skin and hair, revitalizing both.

Last, but not least, lanolin.  Lanolin is a wax produced by sheep to keep their coats waterproof!  In cosmetics, though, it's used as a soothing skin cream and in shaving cream.  It's even used as an ointment base because it absorbs so well into the skin, carrying the needed medicines with it.  Don't worry, it's taken from the shorn wool, without any harm to the sheep.

Why all the information?  We've got a new product of course!

The first in our Luxury Line, this Deadwood Spa Bar is part soap, part spa treatment.  It is a soap base, but that's just what's holding it together.  This bar has shea butter, lanolin, sea kelp, and a high concentration of Dead Sea Salt.  It's a pretty bar, very textured, with white speckles and sage green and forest green marbling throughout.

This is not your every day soap.  In fact, we recommend that you don't use it more than 2-3 times per week.  It's a rough bar, with very little lather, but lather isn't the only way to pamper yourself.  This bar is for special occasions.  It's for that tough day when you just really need to take care of yourself.

And I'll give you a personal anecdote.  I've got a bad cold, have since Wednesday or so.  I've been miserable, and everything hurts, head to toe.  Yesterday, I used this bar in the shower, and I swear for several hours afterwards, my muscles weren't hurting anymore.  It didn't last forever, the cold eventually won over the bar, but those hours lifted my spirits unbelievably.

The cold, of course, also means that I can't smell a thing.  It's annoying.  So I can't tell you that I've personally been able to smell this bar.  I know that it's scented with cedar, sweet orange, eucalyptus, and lemongrass essential oils, but I can't know personally yet what that means.  Rest assured that Eric was the one who did this, though, so you aren't relying on my guesswork.  According to Eric, it's great.  As he puts it, it's a very complex scent, very woodsy with tones of citrus and just a hint of eucalyptus.  Sounds good to me!  I'll let you know as soon as I can smell it for myself.  Fingers crossed that it turns out to be later today.

You Want Some!

Starting NOW, well... as soon as this posts, at any rate, the next ten orders on our site will include one of our NEW LIP BALMS!  Get kissable lips for Valentine's Day!

When you place your order, just tell us in the comments section which one you want.  If you can't decide and don't specify, we'll choose for you.  Each balm is selling for $5.00, so this is a very cool deal for our next ten customers.  Plus, it gives you a chance to check our our brand new stuff!

Here are your choices:

Chocolate Chip Mint...

It's full of luxurious olive oil, sweet almond oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, and vitamin E, in a beeswax base.  Even better, it's made with real dark chocolate and peppermint essential oil for a chocolate chip mint taste and smell that's irresistible!

Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey...

Sweet orange essential oil gives this balm its wonderful scent, but it's the olive oil, almond oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, honey, and vitamin E suspended in the beeswax base that will save your lips from the cold winter wind.

Eucalyptus:

Made with olive oil, almond oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, and vitamin E in beeswax, plus eucalyptus essential oil that's great for healing chapped lips and clearing your nose when you've got a cold.  Plus, it's a light sage green from the sea kelp we've added, known for its high vitamin and mineral content, antioxidant properties, and ability to confer elasticity.

and Totally Tasteless:

Our most basic balm is made solely with olive oil, grapeseed oil, cocoa butter, beeswax, and vitamin E to pamper your lips without all the extras and with no nut-based ingredients, even shea.  Do keep in mind that our equipment may have been in contact with nuts and nut products, so if you've got severe allergies be careful.

Jump on this one!

Even more new stuff!

I know, I know, it seems like we've got something huge and new going on every day. I feel the same way, believe me! It's all just moving so fast.

We've been busy! So busy that we haven't been able to take photos, but those are coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, we've made some new things for you to check out.  They're all up on the site, even though we haven't got photos, because we wanted them to be available to you.

Just in time for Valentine's Day and the need for kissable lips, we've got - count 'em - FOUR lip balms! Each is in a quarter-ounce pot, easy to use, easy to just chuck into a purse or a pocket.

The first is for those of you who are no-frills. The ones who shun the flavors and smells and reach for that original Chapstick. Our Totally Tasteless Lip Balm is all of the healing without the bells and whistles. Moisturizing oils, cocoa butter, beeswax, and Vitamin E are all you'll find in this one. We even stayed away from the almond oil and shea butter for those of you with mild nut allergies.*

*Note: Shea is a nut, for those of you who didn't know. Eric is a nut too, but he's not an ingredient so you don't need to worry about him. Also note, our equipment is all likely to have touched nut products, so those of you who have severe nut allergies should beware. The last thing we want is for you to get hurt.

Our second balm is the Eucalyptus.  Made with an assortment of moisturizing oils, as well as both shea and cocoa butter, beeswax, and Vitamin E, it started off great.  We didn't stop there, though.  Eucalyptus essential oil is both great for healing dry, chapped lips and for helping to clear your nose when you're stuffy.  So having it on your lips, right there beneath your nose, is perfect!  Is that it?  Oh no!  This one also has sea kelp!  Not only did it give the balm a really cool sage green color, but it also is loaded with vitamins and minerals, is full of antioxidants, and has elastic properties that are used in anti-wrinkle creams.  Top shelf!

Funniest name of the night goes to our Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey Balm.  This one's got all the oils, the beeswax, the Vitamin E, and the butters... but it's also got honey!  Honey is a natural antioxidant that's also got the ability to retain moisture, so it's perfect for a lip balm.  Scented with sweet orange essential oil, this one smells amazing too.

Last, but definitely not least, is the Chocolate Chip Mint Lip Balm.  It's got all the oils, butters, Vitamin, E, and  beeswax, of course, but this one's also got... wait for it... dark chocolate!  Yes, that's real dark chocolate melted into the recipe.  Scented with peppermint essential oil, I can't think of anything but ice cream when I'm wearing it.

Is that all that's new?, you ask.  Is that what she's so hyped about?  No, that's not all.

We already had, of course, the Clean Cut Shaving & Bath Soap.  You know all about that one.  Great soap, awesome close, smooth shave, but a pretty masculine scent, what with all the fir and patchouli involved.  What about the girls?  Yeah, what about them?  Well, now we're covered too!  Our new Smooth Operator Shaving & Bath Soap, made from precisely the same recipe so you get all the benefits, is scented with 100% lavender essential oil for a more woman-friendly experience.  It doesn't leave the guys in the dust, though.  Lavender may be a flower, but it's probably the most guy-friendly flower around.  I promise, using Smooth Operator, even if you're a man, won't get you beat up on the playground.

We done yet?  Nope, not quite yet.

I've been dying to try bath bombs... or rather, our version, which are Fizzy Bath Bars.  Remember those awesome soap molds my sister and brother-in-law got us for the winter holidays?  It occurred to me that those would be perfect for Fizzy Bath Bars!  So I was really dying to try them.

In fact, I did try some a while back.  There's a reason you didn't hear about it.  It's mostly because they were not a success.  See, I'm not a patient person.  You could say, and still be accurate, that I'm a fairly impatient person, in fact.  Rather heavy-handed.  A bull in a china shop is what I might be likened to by an observer, and the observer wouldn't get an argument from me.  So when I studied up on these things and read "very little liquid," well... let's just say that the correct version of "very little liquid" and my version of "very little liquid" diverged.

I used somewhat more liquid than I should have.

If you don't know how these things work when they're working properly, it goes like this:  You run a nice, hot bath, take a very dry Fizzy Bath Bar, hop into the bath (just don't literally "hop," I don't want you hurting yourself), and drop in the nice, dry Fizzy Bath Bar, which proceeds to fizz as it reacts with the bath water.  As it fizzes and dissolves, it releases the benefits therein into your bath.  The scents from the essential oils fill the room and take their aromatherapeutic effect, any butters or other ingredients housed therein do their stuff.  That sort of thing.  It's really nice.

When it works.  The key, you might have noticed from this narrative, is that it reacts with water.  Yeah.

What happened on that particular occasion, the occasion when I first tried to make Fizzy Bath Bars, is that I used too much water in the bar itself.  I didn't notice right away, mind you, because it still looked pretty dry to me.  So I took the mixture, pressed it on into the mold, ... and then pressed it again.  And again.  Only it kept growing.  So I took some off and put it into another bar of mold.  And the third one too.  And then all three were growing... and growing... and growing.  As Eric put it, we had in our kitchen the Stay Puft Marshmallow Bars.  Finally, I gave up.  I wrestled the puffy, sticky messes out of the mold and onto a sheet of freezer paper, where they finally stopped reacting with the excess water in them and stopped growing.  By then they were indecipherable blobs with slightly crusty outsides and mushy insides.  Not what a Fizzy Bath Bar should be, to say the least.  Completely unmarketable, in fact.

We didn't waste them, though.  We had to try them anyway.  So we popped them in the bath, one after another, and they fizzed, bubbled, and dissolved.  I must say the smell from the essential oils was wonderful.  So I knew I was on the right track, just not quite there yet.

Now I'm there.  Our first Fizzzy Bath Bar is Serenity, made with a mix of lavender and rosemary essential oils, a heavenly and relaxing combination.  This bar is perfect after a long day of work when you just want the world to disappear for a little while until you can face it again.  It's also got a touch of Yellow Kaolin Clay in it, with all the benefits that carries.

You can expect to see a couple more within the next few days, also just in time for Valentine's Day.  If you need a gift or want a romantic bath with your honey, this is the way to go!