Botanical Earth

I recevied the best phone call today from Debby Rooney, who is the founder of Beads For Education.  She is over in Kenya finishing up with the 2007 Break the Chains of Illiteracy 100 mile Walkathon.  I planned to leave myself this year to go, but family and work took over…..I’m scheduled to go over to Kenya next year.  BEADS is one of the non-profit organizations that I support - actually a percentage of all of Botanical Earth’s sales goes towards charity works.  You might have seen the hand beaded baskets that are made by the women of the Dupoto Womens Group that Botanical Earth offers.  The baskets are beautiful and new colors for spring should be arriving shortly!  If you go to the BEADS site, they offer all sorts of hand beaded items for sale.

For this trip over, we sent over some 50 pounds of our soap for the girls and mothers to enjoy.  Ms. Rooney sent me the picture of the ladies in their beautiful native dresses and then some of the girls.  Later in the month, I will post my letter from Farja, who is the young girl (age 9) that Botanical Earth helps sponsors through school.  It’s a long term commitment, but one that I don’t ever question. 

I have to thank our customer, Alice Eberhard for getting us involved.  She has done the walk for the last 2 years - go Alice!  When she mentioned she worked with BEADS would take any donations of soap, I was more than willing to help.  As a child I grew up in the Middle East and on holiday we would go to Kenya.  It is the only place that I would cry when I had to leave - I love the Amboseli area in particular.  So to know that I could do something as a business too regarding helping girls in Kenya was an honor.  I had friends from Kenya in grade school and college, but all but one has died from the civil unrest throughout the years. 

So for now, Botanical Earth sponsors Farja through school close to her home, and will assist her through college if she chooses.  Hopefully, as the business grows, we can sponsor more girls, and the girls in turn will educate their own people on environmental issues, humanitarian rights and AIDS education. If you want to read more on all the happenings at BEADs and to see some great pictures, including Alice’s - go to http://www.BeadsForEducation.org

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 So I thought it wouldn’t be any worse, and figured what’s the best thing to do when you can’t go out and have orders?  Make soy milk soap! By making soap and letting it stay very cold during set up, it becomes very creamy white - so I made soy soaps all day.  I figure I would go out on the 14th.

But when the 14th came, I had to dig out to GET to the shop the next morning!  Beautiful day, picture perfect but it’s now ZERO degrees….can I whine any more about it being cold?  Ok, I know it’s not snow in New York, but I didn’t think it would be so cold.  That soy soap is going to be white for sure.  For those that have asked, here’s a picture of my shop, it’s not my house - the building is devoted totally to the wonderful world of body care and soapmaking. I can never complain about where I work because the woods are always so pretty all season.

So the 15th, orders will resume again now that I can finally get the tractor out to plow.  There’s plenty of soy milk soap in the molds that’s for certain!

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It’s been freezing here in Missouri the last few weeks.  Temps never going over 25 degrees is not for a person that loves heat.  But I received the best package on Friday from another Missouri business - Goods from the Woods. Upon opening the box, it felt like spring.  Penny sent me a box of 3 different hydrosols to try out and the quality is amazing!  There was a bottle each of their Yarrow, Wild Plum and Elder Flower.  We wildcraft yarrow here at Botanical Earth on the property, and Goods from the Woods had the distinct smell of fresh, young yarrow herb.  Besides calendula, yarrow is my favorite herb to work with, so the fact that Penny added yarrow was a treat.  If you want to try some hand harvested, quality hydrosols check out their offerings at PineNut.com/shop.  They are out of a lot of stock for the season, so put your name on their list for this coming spring/summer’s harvest - I will.  Creating new bedding sprays for pets or facial tonics with these certified organic hydrosols will be an inspiration.  Thank you Penny!!!!

Also, this busy Ozark herbalist is quite the Pine Nut expert.  If you are looking for certified organic nuts such as hickory and pine nuts, you’ll find lots of information on Penny’s site at PineNuts.com

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With our switch over to completely vegan body care formulas, one of the other new additions to the Botanical Earth product line is our new Olive Oil Lip Balms.  With so many of our customers having extremely sensitive skin, or allergies to nut oils, I wanted to create something just for them.  The new formula lip balms are made with only organic virgin olive oil, castor oil, candelilla wax and vitamin e as the base. Currently there is an unscented one and tingly mega mint. 

You’ll still be able to have our popular hemp lip balm!  It’s just now offered in a variety of blends which is new.  I switched the organic shea butter to organic cocoa butter because of the texture the shea butter can develop when heated and slowly cooled.  I like the cocoa butter better myself - so that’s the benefit when you own the business!  After much searching, I found some wonderful organic vegan chocolate that when blended with chocolate absolute from France makes a great cocoa lip balm. 

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I just received the new round of Totally Indie Coupons.  Now until we run out, every order will receive a packet of 40 different independent (indie) designer discounts.  I’ve participated in the past and customers really enjoyed finding new shops - everything from clothes, stationary, jewerly and yes, even other body care businesses.  The discounts run from free shipping, 10-20% off or a few free gifts with purchase. 

It’s a great co-op marketing for small businesses like Botanical Earth.  Lindsay Landis over at Lindsay Designs puts it all together for everyone.  Besides running TotallyIndieCoupons.com, she also has a fantastic website where she creates unique acessories for people and pets.  I love her fabric dog collars….but back to the coupons!

So who are the designers in the coupon pack you’ll receive when you purchase from Botanical Earth? You can find a list at the Totally Indie Coupon site by following this link http://www.totallyindiecoupons.com/ti5a.html.  I can tell you there is a 20% off Botanical Earth coupon in the mix too!!

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