Quick Update

Yes, yes, I know, I promised frequency with this blog and its been sitting. Well, it hasn't been sitting because I haven't been working, I can promise you that. So instead of me waxing poetic today, I'll be posting a progress report. More of my ramblings to come, I'm sure.

One of the biggest hang-ups I've had with getting the website off the ground has been nice looking pictures for the products. If the pictures from my camera phone are fuzzy, small, and off-color, then people viewing the site won't get an accurate idea of what the item looks like. Description alone may not be enough. Plus, its a lot of work, taking the pictures, emailing them to myself, resizing and de-fuzzy-ing, then uploading them to photobucket, then putting them on the site... waaaay too complicated. But at Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, my aunt offered to give me her old digital camera! The screen is broken but the camera and viewfinder still work, so as long as I'm just using it as a regular old camera, then I'm golden! I should be getting that tomorrow at the Winter Stroll. Beautiful pictures, here I come!

Next issue I've been having is packaging for my body scrubs. I tested some of my products on my family last year for Christmas, and everyone had the best stuff to say about the sugar and salt scrubs. The only issue is I got the containers out of a kit, and for the past year I've been trying to find the perfect containers for the stuff. Its been a hard battle with the stores, especially since it needed to be perfect, you know? (Insert eye-rolling at my stubbornness here.) But at Wal-Mart yesterday, trying to find peanut oil for my stepdad to deep fry our turkey in (you heard me right), I found these beautiful glass jars with secure lids that hold about two cups of stuff, it looks like. They're slightly bigger than I wanted, but I'm sick of being picky. They're perfect! They were cheap too, less than two bucks a pop and real glass, so I bought all of them. Now I have seven. I've seen other Wal-Marts carry them, and dollar stores too, just in the past they've only had one or two in stock. Plus, just below where I found these beauties, I saw little glass cups with plastic secure lids, for cooking and such, that hold exactly a cup of stuff. They were slightly cheaper than the jars. I could offer two sizes! They had a lot more of the cooking cups, too.

The only concern I have with glass is that its a bath product, I would hate for it to slip somewhere, break, and someone get hurt. I'd prefer glass over plastic though, its easier to recycle and you can reuse the jars for anything, since glass doesn't hold taste and smell like plastic does. So I was thinking - you know those rubber-ish mats you can buy to put under rugs and sheets and dinner place mats? Buy some of those (cheap at the dollar store), cut to fit the bottom of the container, and glue them into place. Voila! Instant no-slip! Am I a genius or what?

I also plan on working on the website today too. I've been researching new recipes and some cool tips for a brand new section of the site. I hope to get a lot of work done with this rainy Black Friday, since I did a lot of my shopping yesterday and the day before!

Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving. Happy creating!