Wordless Wednesday - The Richness of Fall

Lesson & Laugh of the Day

I LOVE funny blogs. Seriously, absolutely LOVE them! There's nothing better on a blah day than to head over to my short list of funny blogs and be immediately cheered up. Heck, I even have a column on my TweetDeck called 'Humor'. This was good enough that I just HAD to share it!



HOW TO CHANGE YOUR OIL

Women:
1. Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 since the last oil change.
2. Drink a cup of coffee.
3. 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.

Men:
1. Go to O'Reilly auto parts and write a check for 50 dollars for oil, filter, oil lift (AKA kitty litter), hand cleaner and scented tree.
2. Discover that the used oil container is full. Instead of taking it back to O'Reilly to recycle, dump in hole in back yard.
3. Open a beer and drink it.
4. Jack car up. Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.
5. Find jack stands under kid's pedal car.
6. In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
7. Place drain pan under engine.
8. Look for 9/16 box end wrench.
9. Give up and use crescent wrench.
10. Unscrew drain plug.
11. Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil; get hot oil on you in process.
12. Clean up.
13. Have another beer while oil is draining.
14. Look for oil filter wrench.
15. Give up; poke oil filter with Phillips screwdriver and twist it off.
16. Beer.
17. Buddy shows up; finish case with him. Finish oil change tomorrow.
18. Next day, drag pan full of old oil out from underneath car.
19. Throw oil lift (AKA kitty litter) on oil spilled during step 18.
20. Beer. No, drank it all yesterday.
21. Walk to 7-11; buy beer.
22. Install new oil filter making sure to apply thin coat of clean oil to gasket first.
23. Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
24. Remember drain plug from step 11.
25. Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
26. Hurry to replace drain plug before the whole quart of fresh oil drains onto floor.
27. Slip with wrench and bang knuckles on frame.
28. Bang head on floor board in reaction.
29. Begin cussing fit.
30. Throw wrench.
31. Cuss for additional 10 minutes because wrench hit Miss December(1992) in the left boob.
32. Clean up; apply Band-Aid to knuckle.
33. Beer.
34. Beer.
35. Dump in additional 4 quarts of oil.
36. Beer.
37. Lower car from jack stands.
38. Accidentally crush one of the jack stands.
39. Move car back to apply more oil lift (AKA kitty litter) to fresh oil spilled during step 23.
40. Drive car.

(courtesy of Swap Meet Dave)


I'm married to a very handy man. Changing oil is easy for him. I have even helped him completely replace a car engine. Let me tell you, there seriously is something very hot about a man covered in car grease who knows what he's doing underneath the hood of a car. But I digress! (fans self!)

Anyway.....

Even HE sees the advantage of delegating things out to people who have the skills & tools to do them properly and efficiently. YES, there are many things we could do for ourselves. But sometimes, it's better to let the pros do it!!!

Harvest Market Success (and pictures!)

We had so much fun at the Harvest Market at Sundance on Saturday! Even though I was in pain most of the day and drugged up for all of it, we had a lot of fun (I severely sprained my ankle Thursday night, had a splint on it, and honestly, wasn't supposed to be on it nearly as much as I was!).


We arrived right at eight, and I hobble through FROST to get to my booth space (seriously, my splint was caked with snow by the time I got there), only to find out I was on a hill. Even if I thought I could set up without all my product rolling off my tables, I knew I would never be able to navigate on anything but a level surface. Luckily the coordinator sympathized, and he moved me down to a more level location!

My parents were kind enough to come help me & David with the set up. I could lift things, but not walk. David could walk but not lift things. Yeah, we were a GREAT pair! As we started to unload the van, David panics. He forgot the tent!!! Miraculously, he was able to run home in my parents' truck, grab the tent, and get back down with it before the show started, but it was a lovely little wrench thrown into the plans! But we survived!

While he was getting the tent, my parents helped me set up as much as we could. I went to put the black table cloth down on the 8 foot table, and found out that my cute little WHITE puppy must have somehow found it. It was covered in dog hair! So we were forced to use the green cloth that was provided with the table. It looked okay, but not quite what we were planning!


Although I really like how the burgundy runner looked draped over the table. I think it'll be really stunning on the black cloths for future shows. We did have another one for the other table, but forgot to put it out, and I'm going to blame my forgetfulness on the percocet! (which sadly, is probably accurate)

We also added sheer burgundy tie back panels to each of the front corners (sorry, no pictures!). It really added a nice final touch to the booth and helped tie things together.

Oh, and our other freak out moment during set up...

My mom asks me, "Lindsay, where are the rest of your lip balms?"

Me, "They're in one of the boxes."

Mom, "No they're not."

WHAT?!?!?!?! Guess what, I left two entire boxes of lip balms at home. We had about 7 flavors out of our normal 40 flavor line. Of course we discovered this AFTER David had texted me to let me know he was on his way back, otherwise we would have had him bring those with him as well. So... big change of plans in set up! We originally had one more 4 foot table running along the right wall. Without all those lip balms, I didn't have enough product to fill all 3 tables. But in hindsight, the good thing about pulling the table, it gave me a place to sit and elevate my foot during the day.

(our booth is the one to the left of the big american flag)

Finally it's 10am, our booth is set up, I'm not completely freezing, and the buyers are starting to stroll in. My parents head home and David & I are up and ready to have a great day in sales.

And we really did! I am so glad he came with me. Even if I'd been at 100%, I wouldn't have been able to do it all on my own! We were kept busy busy busy all day long. We handed out at least 150 business cards (I'll need to get more before the next show!), we handed out all our 1/4 oz lotion samples (those were a hit!). We sold out of several soaps and a couple of lotions. We also took some custom orders that we'll be shipping out this week.

Highlights of the day:

• Someone came to the show because she read about it on my blog! That was awesome!

• I met one of my regular Etsy customers! She and her friend walked around the corner of my booth and all of a sudden I hear her shout, "Oh my gosh, come here! This is who I buy all my lip balms from!" As soon as she told me her name, I knew exactly who it was! It was so much fun to meet her in person!!!

• I also had two ladies ask me about wholesaling! They're both unique local business, and they'd be a lot of fun to work with! So here's crossing fingers that that works out!

Finally 4 o'clock rolled around, and my brothers showed up to help us break down. I was actually sad to go! We had sales right up until the very end (and some people looking even when we had almost everything packed up). It was so cool to be hauling EMPTY product boxes back to the van. We brought 8 or 9 bankers boxes filled with product and we went home with 4 empty ones! WooHoo!!!

I'm now utterly exhausted (I slept for 12 hours last night!!!), and I'm forcing myself to take Sunday completely off (more for my ankle than anything else). But I'll be jumping back into the swing of things Monday morning again! (and we'll be adding our soaps back into our shop as we double check our post show inventory since we also have a new wholesale account that we'll be filling as well)

If you'd like to see more pictures of the show, we have some posted on our Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blsoaps/sets/72157622467673770/

Harvest Market at Sundance

If you live in Utah, come visit us this Saturday (September 26, 2009) at the Harvest Market at the beautiful Sundance Resort! It runs from 10am - 4pm.

We will have our booth set up there and we'd love for you to come meet us in person (not to mention the opportunity to smell & try before you buy!).

If you mention you read about our show on our blog, we'll give you 10% off your purchase!!!

(discount applies to purchases made at the Harvest Market only)

Soaping Madness!!!

We've been trying to get our soap inventory bumped up before the holidays hit us too hard. Well, guess what, it's here! Orders keep coming in, shows are going well, and we keep scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our soap inventory! We're making soap almost daily, usually double batches at least. So if you don't see what you're looking for in our shop, let us know you're looking! If it's not already on the curing racks, we'll do what we can to bump it up on the production schedule!

In the meantime, enjoy some soapy pictures!


Charcoal Cleanser: I just love how these swirls turned out! I don't want to cut them into bars!


Zebra Face: We've made extra batches of this one since it keeps selling out on us so fast!



Rebel: A new Mens Soap - this will be coming out hopefully the first of next week. We still need to take pictures of the final product.


Pakalana: Also a new soap we're adding to our line! Look for this early next week!