Things About Florida - part deux

My first post in this series: Things About Florida are the things I love about living in South Florida (the tropics) and it's also my way of convincing my friends to move here.
More Florida love...

Snorkeling or diving year round. Coral reefs everywhere.

The beach.

Offroading with us in State Parks (totally allowed). Look how macho that can make you feel!

More chanting...

Florida

Florida

Florida

Two Beauty Blog Give-Aways!

#1: The Beauty Of Life blog: N.Y.C. New York Color is sponsoring a fantastic giveaway for Jamie Sanders' readers. They will be giving away 10 sets of their fantastic Lippin' Large Lip Plumpers to 10 lucky readers! Better enter today because the deadline is tonight at 11:59 pm. Winners are announced tomorrow. Good Luck!

#2: Canadian Beauty blog: A gift basket stuffed with John Frieda products which has a value of over $100! The basket contains:

Frizz-Ease® Curl Around™ Style-Enhancing Shampoo and Conditioner
Frizz-Ease® Thermal Protection Hair Serum
Frizz-Ease® Dream Curls® Curl perfecter
Frizz-Ease® Secret Weapon® Flawless Finishing creme
Frizz-Ease® 100% Shine Glossing mist
Brilliant Brunette™ Shine Release™ Naturalising Shampoo and Conditioner with Light Enhancers™
Brilliant Brunette™ Runway Straight™ smoothing milk
Brilliant Brunette™ Starlit Waves™ wave enhancing spray
Brilliant Brunette™ Shining Holdä Maximum Hold Hair Spray
Sheer Blonde Highlight Activating Moisturising Shampoo and Conditioner with Light Enhancers™
Sheer Blonde Blonde Ambition Mousse
Sheer Blonde Spun Gold shaping & highlighting balm
Luminous Colour Glaze™ Hazelnut to Espresso
as well as shampoos, conditioners, and other styling treatments!

The contest closes on February 14th at 12am. All you have to do is share your name, email and what your favorite hair product is.

So good luck everyone. I am off to try to win, too!!

Nice Catch!

My family went fishing off the neighborhood dock the other night, and my 7 year old son, caught this catfish. It was the size of my forearm.

We ate it for dinner that night. Dipped in egg, powdered in flour and sauteed in butter and olive oil with a squeeze of lemon. I had never eaten fish that was breathing an hour before. It was a bit hard to try it, but once I got through that first bite, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Delicious!

Heart Bath Melts

I made these melts for fun.

If you want to try them, you need only a few things, including a plastic candy mold.

Basic Bath Melt recipe:

unrefined cocoa butter
coconut oil
chocolate fragrance
sprinkle of cocoa

Melt in double boiler on low heat.
Anyone can make these cute melts and they smell like candy.

Sugar Cubes Are Worth A Free Gift

We've decided to run a sugar cube promotion. Why? Because we LOVE sugar! If you find a sugar cube in any Crush On You that you order from us, you will win a free gift from Product Body! We will insert sugar cubes carefully into every 25 Crush On You scrub we formulate. We will notate which customer it went to, and if you claim it, we will send you a $15.00 off coupon to be used at Product Body Shop the next time you shop with us!

Sugar cubes are not just for horses and coffee. ;)

The Soap Queen

Anne Marie Faiola is the owner of Brambleberry and Otion and writer of The Soap Queen blog. I consider her a fellow business woman, blogger, vendor and friend. At age 30, she has accomplished so much in the business world, it is a bit staggering.

She recently blogged about the gift I sent her and said such nice things about our products. You can read that post here. If you haven't been to her blog yet, I urge you to check it out. She has very interesting things to say about crafts, business, being an entrepreneur, having a love for cupcakes, soap and introducing indie companies with their new products to the world.

Thank you Anne-Marie for your support and kind words!!

Dark Chocolate Almond + Champagne Body Scrub

Our Valentine's Day take out box of body treats.

Two 4.75 ounce jars of Crush On You scrubby wash in two limited edition scents formulated just for Valentine's Day. Dark Chocolate Almond Crush that won't make you fat and Sparkling Champagne Crush that won't leave you hungover.

Package of yum for $20 at Product Body Shop!

I better go whip some up for me, too!

I Can Make It And Eat It, Too

I have to say, that experiencing 4 classes of cake decorating was super fun. Last night (last level 1 class), we learned how to make the rose. So fun. I am in shock, though, because I never had any decorating juice in me, but check out this cake! I made that! All by myself... I baked the cake, whipped the icing up, colored it, decorated it and VOILA! I start level 2 next monday. I wonder what's in store... Too fun!

Foam and Hallmark Loved Our Whipped Shea

Product Body made it into Foam and Hallmark magazines this month.  Both features were on our Double-Whipped Shea Butter.  The Foam feature was focusing on natural green products and the feature in Hallmark was about moisturizers that work.  

Press is good.

Heart Art

For Valentines... at Etsy shops.

Sea Finds Designs: Green Sea Glass Ring. $27.00.

henrihopper: henri with hearts - blue. Print is a reproduction of an original art by artist. 8x8 - $25.00.

AmeliaMakesArt: Heart felted soap : $6.00 per soap.

littleblackrabbit: tin art - honey. Made from a vintage honey tin and discarded pine (4 1/2 x 4 5/58 " One in stock, $30.00.

geelizzie: Whatever You Say comic book glass pendant - -reversible. One in stock. $12.00, 1 1/2 x 1 1/2".



All of these Etsy artists have such original works. I my have to go get myself something. :)

Beige Bubble Rubble

A new wholesale customer in Texas asked me to make a batch of Bubble Rubble in sweet vanilla mango.  Product Body's Bubble Rubble, which is a solid bubble bath, has only been made in lavender, lemon, tangerine, and hyacinth and all beautifully colored and smelly delicious.  I figured it was a reasonable request, right?  "Sure!!", I said.

When I was hand  mixing this batch together I added yellow color and scent and set it up for curing overnight.   Well, this morning, to my surprise and disappointment, the batch turned to a mauve-like beige color.  Uh oh.

Now I had heard of soap makers warning each other that vanilla can cause the soap to discolor to a brown, but I never really gave it much thought in this case. :[

I called my customer, explained the situation and she was so easy going about the whole thing.  She figured as long as it smelled wonderful, she didn't care.  I sent her extra Bubble Rubble in Tangerine as a booby prize and hope it sells well for her.

I quite like the color, but it looks like a cocoa, not vanilla mango.....

 Bummer. 

Cupcake Heaven

I've got sugar on the brain.....

Things About Florida

An old friend came to town a couple of weeks ago with his wife and daughter who I absolutely fell in love with.  It was my first time meeting Courtney and Maddy and we hit it off.  They are seriously thinking of leaving New York and moving somewhere completely different and are actively looking for places to move to.  

Gary and Brad are good friends and I adore him and his whole little family.  They are considering Florida as a spot for possible relocation, but the heat is a problem for Courtney.  I have devised a plan to shed the light on how great Florida is, even with the heat, so that they will move here.... and soon!

Courtney and me

Once a week I plan on pointing out reasons why Florida can be wonderful.  Courtney, this is for you!

First group of reasons:

1.  The beach is 3 miles away and it is available every day.

2.  Look at these built in playmates!

3.  I love playing, too!

So this concludes the first installation of brainwashing.  (Let us chant)

Florida

Florida

Florida

Warning About All Natural Labeling!

There are plenty of companies out there hoisting the “all natural” banner, but we urge you to pay close attention and to read the labels.

For example, fragrance oils are not natural, while essential oils are.  Also, an ingredient ending in “ben” (with the exception of Gentle Ben, though who would put that sweet bear in a body product is beyond us) is in all likelihood a paraben (ethylparaben, methylparaben etc.). The thing is, PARABENS ARE NOT NATURAL!  They have been shown to have hormone-disrupting effects (we think pregnancy does that effectively enough, thanks) as well as a few other nasty side effects that we don’t want you to have to worry about.

We know of one very prominent pregnancy product company that has the phrase “All Natural Ingredients” boldly written right on the front of their belly butter while the ingredient label lists no less than 3 chemicals including two different parabens and phenoxyethanol.  The latter is listed on the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) under toxicology with the following copy:

“Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. May cause reproductive defects. Severe eye and skin irritant.”  No, we aren’t kidding. You can read the data yourself right here:http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/PH/2-phenoxyethanol.html. And mind you, this is in a Belly Butter!

At first we scratched our heads over the “All Natural Ingredients” label and more than one person in our office got pretty pissed off over it.  So here’s what we think:  they don’t mean that ALL the ingredients are natural, but that SOME ingredients are “all natural”, as in “This product contains some all natural ingredients.”  Fabulous.  So does Mop N’ Glo, which might make your belly look really nice, but we don’t recommend rubbing it on.  Apparently there’s a fine line between lying and just misleading. Bet no one ever explained that to you in ethics class, did they?

Seriously though, we find this sort of misleading labeling disgusting.  Sadly it happens way more than you might think (we were shocked and angered ourselves).  In this case it’s particularly putrid as this company is urging you to rub something that is “harmful if absorbed through the skin” and “may cause reproductive defects” all over your pregnant belly.  Yuck.

Look – we aren’t saying that parabens or chemicals are inherently evil.  And really, we all ought to use whatever bath and body products we feel good about using.  But we all need to make informed choices. Misleading people that are trying to make smart and healthy decisions is disgusting.  Factor in the fact that the people they are misleading are pregnant women with growing bellies and it just gets worse.

So we URGE you to read labels.  Educate yourself about ingredients so that you can make smart choices that you can feel good about, both for yourself and your baby.

And remember this: every MAMA BOMB product is ALL NATURAL, and we mean EVERY INGREDIENT.  We also don’t use water or other fillers  - every ingredient has a purpose, so you aren’t paying for something who’s primary ingredient you can get from your tap.  Read our labels.  Look up the ingredients.  We promise that WE won’t ever lie to you, ever.

This is published on Mamabomb.com.

Cake Clowns - Class 3

Cake decorating class was a blast last night.  We made clowns, which I am generally not a fan of, but they were fun to make.  Just so you know, the clown heads are plastic and they get inserted into the icing body.  The whole process I did myself, which is great because the only frosting I have ever done in the past was with a tub of Betty Crocker and a knife.  I actually baked the cupcakes and created the icing clouds and the clowns.

I had left over icing in my bags and two extra cupcakes, so the pictures below show me trying out some designs .  They didn't get home without getting banged around, unfortunately, but they were delicious....

Elvis, Johnny Knoxville, or Val Kilmer?

Character.

My Mother's Group Therapy Session

A funny story told by my mother, long time psychotherapist and Product Body junkie:

I run a women's group therapy session each week.  There are about 7 women who are truly dynamite.  We decided to take a 3 week break for Christmas because all of us were going to be very busy.  I gave each of the women Product Body cream and Crush on You as a holiday gift.

 

Well, we finally got back together and the group was a bit rusty.  Interactions were superficial and there were long silences between these interactions.  Finally I said "You are playing it awfully safe tonight.  Could you look around the room and say one significant statement to someone here tonight."  Well, after they recovered from the shock of my challenge to them, one of the members, said "So, what did you think of that Crush on You?"  We all laughed and group resumed on a much better note.  

Thanks Jo for saving group.  Love, Mom

First Cake - Wilton Decorating

I had to make icing for the first time at home before my cake decorating class, ice my cake and bring in the cake to decorate in class.  Can you believe that the main ingredient for icing is Crisco?  Pounds of Crisco and confectioners sugar, a couple of tablespoons of meringue powder, flavor oils and water and ***voila!*** icing!

That is me in my kitchen mixing the first batch of icing

The class was super fun, although I think my cake turned out pretty ugly.  Why you ask?

a)  The cake looks very lopsided and weird

b)  I don't like the colors so much

c)  I'm not big on rainbows unless they are in the sky or from a crystal in the sun

The rainbow took me over an hour to make.  Each part of the rainbow is made of hundreds of star squirts,  with each tiny star taking about one second to squeeze out.  The process was very fun and I thought of nothing but icing while I was decorating.  Immersing myself was a way to completely detach and de-stress, although I don't think I breathed because I was concentrating so hard.

Now I know why professional cakes can be pricey.  It's not the ingredients.  It's the skill of the decorator.  I will continue to share, but being a beginner is a challenge and can be embarrassing.  ;)

Top Ten in Jewel Box Dreams

Susanna of Jewel Box Dreams is blogger who likes us (yay!).  She included Product Body as one of Jewel Box Dreams Top Ten Beauty Products picks.  We are very excited to be included in her list.  Susanna writes an excellent beauty blog and I have become a loyal weekly reader.

Thank you, Susanna!

Cake Decorating With Wilton

As one of my Christmas presents, my husband signed me up for Wilton's cake decorating class.  He knows how excited I got after I saw how beautiful bath cupcakes could look like.  Anne-Marie of the Soap Queen blog gave a tutorial (with pictures).  I was so happy for her when they came out so well after some sad bath bomb cupcake flops.  This is what the final cuppies looked like:

So you can see why I got inspired to expand my knowledge of bath and body and test the waters where I have zero skill:  Confections.  It is one of my goals this year to try new things where my comfort level is seriously compromised and be willing to fail when I do attempt a new thing.   Like cake decorating.  I have no more experience with decorating a cake past the can of chocolate frosting you buy in the supermarket and a butter knife.  Maybe some sprinkles and candles.

So I am out of my comfort zone with this class, 'tis true, but only because I have never done it and I am a bit clutzy with fine detail. This is an understatement, folks. 

My class started last week, but we only talked and there was a quick demo in making the icing and .  Tonight, my class meets and I am supposed to bring in a cake, already baked and iced with the stiff buttercream frosting I am to make.  Hmm.  I know I should have practiced this week, but with work, company and other family related events, I could not get to the cake thing before today.

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