August 1st already…..damn…
I don’t mean to complain but just where the heck does time go???!! It seems like it was just June a few days ago!

Let’s review July:

Weather
As of July 31st summer had not hit yet….Oh we’ve had a fairly warm day or two and if I remember right a total of 78 minutes of summer but most of the time it’s been gray and hovering around 65…while the rest of the entire country is steaming in 95+ degrees!

This week and it looks like next week will be in the mid-70′s hitting 80 over the weekend…
woooooo
‘Bout time!

Business
I have decided instead of revamping the old style labels I’m just going to revamp entire scent lines instead! We are discontinuing half of our product line and am in the process of bringing new scents in. This is a time consuming process as I have to group like minded scents narrowing them down so I can order samples. Then from the samples we move into the testing phase. This all takes time and money but I hope to have at least two new collections up before the end of the year.

We did/are doing a few new festivals this year and are already booked through the end of December.

At the moment we are in production of our fall soap and will soon move into the Christmas/holiday ones.

Puppy
Jasper (Brodies cousin) is now 5 months old and a tank! Him and Brodie are best friends!

We found two new dog venues!
Check out our new link category….Dog Links!

Older
Our oldest granddaughter turned 14!
Wow…talk about making me feel old..

Saying Goodbye
A year and a half ago we had the opportunity to have an Umbrella Cockatoo…we weren’t really looking for one..it just sort of happened. He was a rescue of sorts as the people who had him had NO idea what a large parrots needs were.

Long story short…
The last nine months have been less than kind to me with my work load and other issues. I simply had no time left over for Lemon and was getting increasingly distressed as I couldn’t give him what he needed. Parrots are a social bird and need human contact/interaction.

After discussion with hubs we decided while we would not actively seek a new home for him if the perfect opportunity arose then we would consider rehoming him. There was no way we would just rehome him to anyone.

As luck would have it a few days after that discussion Lemon found a new home. As sad as I was to see him go I am thrilled to have him now on a small farm living in an outside aviary (inside during bad weather) with another Umbrella Cockatoo his own age!

And saving for last…as it’s the hardest…
We had to say goodbye to our beloved 10 yr. old English Bull Terrier, Maggie Mae. That’s all I really want to say about that…

Jasper, American Staffordshire, 4 months

Lemon in his new home with Kramer

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

A handful of years ago I had graphic designer students revamp our packaging. It was 1000 times better than anything I had come up with but it wasn’t 100% exactly what I wanted.

So when we added our Spring, Summer, Pear and Spirit lines this year (Fall and Holiday products last year) I designed the packaging the way I wanted…..and I will say…They Pop! We get TONS of compliments on both the packaging and the soap.

So….I decided to revamp most of the rest of our product labels….

Then last night it hit me…right between the eyes!

I have been making body products going on eleven years now and for most of those years we have offered the very same scents that we have now….

And you know what….
It’s time for some of them to go!!!

So…….

We are not going to be redoing packaging…
We will be revamping some of our collections as well with new and totaly different scents!

This is what I know right at the moment:

Gardeners Collection:
Keeping packaging
Changing scents

Herb Patch:
Packaging – Gone!
Scents – Gone!

Herbal Teas:
Packaging – Will be revamped if we keep this line
Scents – Will be changing if we keep this line

Hint of Asia:
Packaging – Gone!
Scents – Gone!

Island Tropics:
Packaging – Gone!
Scents – Gone with the exception of Plumeria in limited one-of quantities

Simply Soft:
This entire scent line just might be gone

SpaLusion:
Packaging – Questionable
Scents – Will be revamped if we keep this line

The rest of our catagories are keepers.

We have soap on clearance and once these are gone they are gone unless we bring them back for a limited time as a one-of product.

I am excited as we can now add new scents and updated packaging that more reflects our spirit!

All of this will take time as we are now coming into the fall and holiday production zone. We have to now concentrate on producing our Fall Harvest and Seasons Greetings products as well as attending numerous local shows we have line up through the end of the year.

Our website may end up looking a little bare until we start testing and uploading new products so bear with us…
We are working as fast as we can.

The only problem now is…..

What Do We Add????

I’m not hot on foodie type scents so you will NOT be seeing Grandma’s Cupcake or Snickerdoodle soap.

Remember we do things in three’s (three scents per product line).

Anyone have any scents they want to see added to our product line? There are hundreds of scents to choose from and it’s going to take me some time to even pick the first ones to test not to mention grouping them together in three’s!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Wishing you and your friends and family a very happy and safe 4th of July!!!

I am looking forward to having three days off….
With sunshine no less!!

Happy 4th of July!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

As you may have noticed I have tweaked the website just a bit!

New:
We no longer have a Beaded Soap category.

We now have a One-Of category-On occassion we have fragrances on hand that we have decided for one reason or another not to incorporate into our regular line. So we will make a limited supply product to use up the fragrance. If a particular product goes over well we will sporadically make more…just not on a regular schedule!

All One-Of soaps will NOT be packaged in our soap boxes but instead will be sold totaly naked (no packaging whatsoever!).

We have deleted a few of the scent lines that were slow sellers. We may at some point add these back in.

We have finally revamped our Umoja collection and no longer use the very expensive fair trade ingredients so we were able to bring the pricing down substantially!

Some pictures are missing and I am at this very moment working on new ones!

I ask that you have patience as I have to fit this in between everything else!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Task #1 on my weekend to-do list….

Create soap box for the Patchouli soap…

DONE!

And it’s not even the weekend yet!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

I am so looking forward to having a 4-day weekend…..

I plan on doing two things….

We have a TON of cured soap that is ready to be packaged…So I will be working on those custom handmade soap boxes!

I plan on spending a LOT of time revamping the website. I will be moving things around just a bit and reorganizing a few categories. Some pictures will be deleted but I will be working on new pictures to replace them.

Patchouli soap is ready however this soap will now be packaged in a custom soap box that has yet to be designed. I hope to have time over the weekend to squeeze this in.

Weather is supposed to be a mixed bag (of course!!) of…clouds, rain, sun however if the past is any indication we will have mostly clouds with rain!

We have our first outdoor festival in the middle of next month so in addition to the above I’m trying to get things ready. Mostly it’s just packaging soap and cutting up lots of free samples to give away. Any soap made now won’t be cured in time so I’m not even going to attempt to cram any more soap making sessions in!

Hope everyone has a nice 3 or 4 day holiday!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

This Saturday and Sunday join us at A Mother’s Day To Remember Show!

We have lots of new soap that will be available at this show….

Pear (Anjou Pear Blossom, Melissa Pear)

New packaging for our spring and summer soap:
Ume Blossom
Asiatic Lily & Cantaloupe
Blue Lotus
Satsuma Guava
Raspberry Ice
Watermelon Herb Granita

We will also have new one-of soaps….
Meaning I had a handfull of fragrances that I never did anything with so we made soap.
These one-of soaps are not packaged but instead are sold ‘naked’.
Once these soaps are gone there will be no more!

A Mother’s Day To Remember
Treat Mom to something different this year! Make it a Mother’s Day to Remember.

April 30th & May 1st, 2011
Sat 9am-5pm Sun 11am-5pm

Our Mother’s Day Show includes:
-Mini spa treatment and demos, make-overs, and more…

-Free portrait with Mom to remember her special day!

-Shopping! Have Mom pick out the gift she really wants! Shop jewelry, make-up, candles, bath, and more!!

Location:
Hollywood Schoolhouse
14810 NE 145 Street
Woodinville, WA 98072

See you there!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Thank You Judy!!!!

Our website is now back up and working.

Everything has been upgraded to the latest and greatest and should be working fine.

If, however, you have an issue with anything please let us know.

If you are looking for a great website person who is proficient with Zencart then give Judy a try!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Ok so what I though would be an easy process…
I screwed up!

Our website is set up to use Paypal IPN for payment processing…which, from what I understand is outdated. So I tried to convert to Paypal Express…..
and it didn’t work.

For the moment our checkout is not working and is in ‘sandbox’ mode.
I have an email in to my web person and I’m hoping she can get this fixed in the next day or two.

If you need to place an order before then please contact me at sales(at)countrymeadowltd(dot)com and we can do it via email!

Thank you for your patience. I thought this would be relatively easy but obviously I’m not entering in the correct information.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

I had purposely set last night aside to do work on the computer…..I figured I had 2 – 2.5 hours of business related stuff to get caught up on.
Among them:

Pay bills
Work on website
Work on blog post (we are going to be a guest blogger on a suppliers blog!)
Print soap boxes
Create new summer soap boxes
Create new spring and summer sugar scrub labels
Blog on our own blog

None of that got done.

For some unknown reason my computer was running like cold molasses….really.
I could barely check and respond to a couple of really important emails.

So after reaching my irritation limit and consulting with hubs (gotta love texting!) I went into defrag mode.
This computer is…guessing…..4-5 years old and I have never, ever defrag’d….I thought this was something you could set up to do automatically from the control panel.
Apparently…not.

What I didn’t realize that when you defragment your computer you should also disable the screen saver.
After running defrag overnight it was still at a measley 35% in compacting the files.
Once I disabled the screen saver it reached 95% fairly quickly.

Unfortunately I had to leave so I’m hoping hubs will take over and finish.
Then once I get back I’m going to run the virus scan (unless he already did that).

I’m hoping with the above the computer will be back up and running better than normal.
As much as I want and drool over the latest and greatest computers…
I admit I don’t REALLY need one….

Yet.

So later today I’m hoping to get a couple of hours computer time in.
I have a lot of catch-up to do!

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com