Prem Soaps

Hot Scents for Summer 2012

I can’t believe it’s actually time for me to write this post…winter felt shorter than usual and spring breezed right by me.  We’ve been hard at work in the Prem Soaps kitchen, so inspired by what’s happening outdoors, making some new creations as well as some of our old favorites for summer.  Check it out!

Soap

Lime with Cilantro.  Reminds me of guacamole and margaritas.

Grapefruit Geranium.  Inspired by garden flowers and summery citrus.

Candles

We’ve practically been a candle factory around here.  We went with simple citrus this time.  Love!

Lime. We eat soooo many limes in the summer.

Grapefruit.  Sharp and refreshing.

Massage Candles

Summer is sexy and so are our massage candles.

Tangerine Sage.  Another sweet citrus paired with a favorite garden herb.

Lime.  Notice a theme?

Geranium obsession.  It’s kind of my new lavender.

Salt Scrubs

This obviously needs to be included.

Coconut Lime.  Every time I use it, I kind of want to eat it, but remind myself that it’s really really salty.

Happy Memorial Day!  And welcome, summer!

Spring Cleaning!

The sun is shining, birds are singing, it’s warm enough to go outside without a jacket (sometimes!), in our garden tiny little leaves of lettuce have just popped out of the ground….and you know what that means - time for some spring cleaning!

Some of our long-time customers probably remember that our soap used to have a different shape. The first soap mold we bought made very square soap. When we went to buy more molds so that we could make more soap at one time, the company we bought the mold from was totally missing. I mean, the website was there, an order was placed, but never processed, and noone answered my emails or calls. Finally, we decided it was best to order from another company. We love our new molds! But they make rectangular-shaped bars. Now that we’ve been around for a while, we’re making a move toward consistency. That’s where spring cleaning comes in! We have just a few of our old, square bars left, and it’s time for them to go! (I should say…they’re not actually OLD, just older, and they don’t match the new bars we’ve been making.)

All of our square soap is now on sale for just $5.50! Help us clean out our inventory, and clean up your bod at the same time, for a great price. Sale scents include: Grapefruit with Juniper Berries, Grapefruit Vanilla, Coconut Milk, Pine with Lavender Buds, Eucalyptus with Red Clover, and Clove with Pink Rose Petals.

We Love Shag!

We are thrilled and honored, overjoyed and excited, super psyched and happy to announce that our products are now available at Shag!

Shag is, in their own words, a sexy shop. And we love sexy things! I’ve been loving Shag since they opened in our neighborhood a few years back. They stock really interesting and awesome luxury sex-related products including bath and beauty products like ours, high-end sex toys, bronze vagina doorknobs (not joking!), custom and handmade lingerie, funny cards, etc. It’s on my way home from the subway, so I’ll sometimes pop in and grab a little something for Rob.

I approached Sam, the owner, about carrying our products before Jane was born, but unfortunately for us, she was already carrying several lines of soap and didn’t actually have space in the store. I was over the moon when she recently got in touch with me about carrying our products. It’s an amazing opportunity for us for so many reasons - the store is immaculately put together (as you’ll see from my photos!) and it’s in a great location. But more than anything, we’re honored to be included in the amazing group of other (mostly local) artists who also work with Shag. Sam has done a fantastic job curating her store and we are so honored to be a part of it!

This all just happened, so unfortunately, our products are not yet available for sale on Shag’swebsite, but are available in the retail store, located at N6th and Roebling in Williamsburg.

Love, love, love!

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, I’ve been thinking a lot about celebrating love and romance. I love love and can go either way on romance, but I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I was a single lady for a long time and Valentine’s Day, whether you think it’s crap or not, it tends to make you feel kind of bad about not having someone to smooch with. So I would go out with my friends, which kind of ends up looking like this:

As you can see, it’s a whole different kind of celebration. Not so much with
the romance.

Once I met this face…

…I tried to celebrate Valentine’s Day a little differently. (Even though I think it’s crap.) Last year, I was all pregnant and miserable and cranky and unhappy, and thought maybe a romantic night out with my sweet husband would make me feel better.

If you looked look this…you would be cranky too!

I made reservations at one of our favorite vegetarian restaurants, Counter. We had a horrible time. It was a prix fixe dinner, heavy on the tofu and mushrooms (Juliet no like, bad vegetarian, I know), with a special cocktail. I know it’s ok for pregnant ladies to have a cocktail here and there but I wasn’t drinking and asked for something else—which they refused to make for me. I couldn’t even order something else and pay for it. I’m pretty sure we ate falafel on our way home (the mark of a bad dinner!).

I really wish we had celebrated last year the way we plan to celebrate this year—at home, relaxing, with a massage trade. Massages are my favorite thing ever and are made so much fancier and nicer with our massage candles.

I think I’ve mentioned that massage candles are my favorite of our products (of course I love them all, is it wrong to have a favorite?). Having a candle lit makes the room feel romantic, even if it’s just our bedroom, and to me, a massage feels really special when you use a little bit of warm, delicious-smelling oil. My favorite is the lemon rose. I don’t think Rob has a favorite - I think he just likes how happy it makes me! So sweet, right?!

I want you to have a wonderful, low-key, romantic Valentine’s Day too! In honor of my least favorite holiday, we’ve decided to sell our fabulous massage candles for just $14, instead of the usual $18. Whether you like to go out or stay in, it’s a perfect Valentine’s Day gift and a great way to start the end of the evening, if you know what I’m saying.

I know I won’t regret forgoing the fancy dinner out in favor of a casual night in. And I’ll get to be with this little valentine:

Who could pass that up!?

Love, love, love! And Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

No more leaky scrubs!

A little confession: there’s a problem with one of our products. We’ve known about it basically since we started making it, we’ve tried a few different things to solve it, nothing worked, so I sort of put it out of my mind. I didn’t hear anything about it for a long time so that made it easier. Then the holidays hit. Anyone who works in retail knows this is the time of year where you have three times as many orders as usual so it’s not shocking that this particular problem reared it’s ugly head. And of course we had no time to do anything about it.

You may have already guessed from the title, but sometimes, during shipping, our scrubs leak! Our salt scrubs are a simple combination of sea salt, carrier oils and essential oils which separate and need to be stirred upon opening. Every once in a while, our customers were receiving a box full of goodies, soaked in messy oil, ruining our packaging and generally creating a pain for the recipient.

My first thought, upon hearing this flaw, was to try to seal the jars the way I do jams and jelly, by heating the product up, pouring it into hot jars, boiling them for 10 minutes, and hoping for the best. Essential oils, however, evaporate at a very low temperature, so when I heated up the scrub, all of its yummy smell was lost. Then I tried putting the scrub into the jars cold and boiling them, but the jars didn’t seal. Then I decided just to tighten the tops reallllly tightly and cross my fingers…scrubs are for summer, anyway, right?

Then the holidays hit and people were ordering scrubs left and right. One of my customers, also a family friend, emailed me to let me know that her scrub had leaked all over her package. Of course, I felt awful, especially because I knew that this was a possibility. I offered a refund, and started NOT recommending scrubs to my family and friends. We even discussed not selling them anymore - who wants to receive an oily mess of a package? Michelle loves our scrubs and absolutely didn’t want to stop selling them so we knew we needed to come up with a solution.

Now that the holiday rush is over, we have had some time to think, and Michelle has come up with the solution! We’re sealing our scrubs with soy wax and it totally works. I’m confident that our scrubs will reach our customers intact and mess-free.

If you’ve received one of our scrubs and it was oily and messy, email me, and I’ll send you another scrub of your choice, free of charge.

Speaking of which, we made two new yummy scrubs while we were at it - Lemon Rose and Rosemary Lemongrass. Yum!

Lemon Rose Salt Scrub

Rosemary Lemongrass Salt Scrub

Stocking Stuffer Guide

Again, a long time between blog posts! Oops. I was going to lead this post with a little paragraph about Jane and how cute she is and how obsessed I am with her but before I started I read my last entry, since it’s been so long, and WOW personal. So for this post I’m just going to talk about Prem Soaps and fabulous organic vegan beauty products for the holidays.

Prem Soaps is a super awesome place to get all your gifts this year, let me tell you why! Our products are made from the highest-quality ingredients we can find, made simply and with love, just for you. They’re also really affordable. And we’re a small, family-run business. (Michelle is family, no question about that.)

I love all of our products, obviously, so for today I’m going to give you my top 5 stocking stuffer ideas, all $15 or less.

1. A half-pint sized jar of fizzy bath salts. Our bath salts are made from a blend of hand-crushed sea salt, healing epsom salts, baking soda, citric acid for fun bubbling, organic essential oil and sometimes organic dried flowers. A much-enhanced bath experience for $9.

Orange jasmine bath salts.

2. One of our holiday soap sets. This was my mom’s idea, three small bars of soap for $10, for people you might ordinarily give chocolate to. I know I’d rather have some delicious-smelling soap instead of delicious-tasting but calorie-rich chocolate. I’ve created three combinations for you, Winter Spirit to uplift, Warm and Spicy, just like I hope your holiday is, and Soft and Mellow, unscented for people who aren’t so into that. For blog readers as special as you, we’d also be willing to customize your soap set with whatever scents you’d like - just email us.

Warm and spicy soap set.

3. A baby candle. These adorable quarter-pint sized candles are the the best little something. They come in perfect quilted mason jars and contain only almost soot-free soy wax and organic essential oils. Burning essential oils is a whole new way to enjoy and be healed by them. These are a total steal at just $7, and we’ve even created a fun holiday scent, peppermint vanilla.

Peppermint vanilla baby candles.

4. A salt scrub. It’s amazing how something so simple can also be so luxurious. We make our salt scrubs using our hand crushed sea salt, mixing it with our favorite carrier oils and adding an awesome blend of organic essential oils. Both exfoliating and super moisturizing, its an awesome pampering gift for the low price of $15.

Cedarwood patchouli salt scrub.

5. Our lip balm sampler. Good vegan lip balm is hard to find, and we’ve been continuously perfecting our lip balm recipe.  It’s pretty good if we do say so ourselves. This set includes our most popular flavors, tingly eucalyptus mint, fresh lemon and fun lip-plumping cinnamon. Again, we’d be happy to customize this for you if you let us know which flavors you’d like.

Lip balm sampler.

Here’s hoping your holidays are filled with joy, happiness and (organic, vegan) treats!

And just one picture of Jane and Ally, my little loves! I couldn’t resist!

Two Exciting Events!

Wow, it has been a really, really long time since I have written a blog entry…but I have a good excuse! Jane Olive, my sweet little smushy baby, was born almost a month ago early in the morning. I was more than desperate to JUST HAVE HER ALREADY when my water broke, for the first time in maybe a month I felt happy - baby was finally coming and I could finally have my body back (partially, at least).

Eating supposedly-but-not-really labor-inducing lemon cupcakes, desperate to go into labor!

The Labor

I waited all day for labor to begin, with the threat of induction hanging over my head. Anyone reading this probably already knows that I’m into natural stuff, so of course we were planning to have a natural childbirth as well, and induction is not really a part of that. Luckily, I had the best midwife on the planet deliver my baby, her name is Coralie MacQueen out of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt…ladies, if you are searching for a midwife to deliver your baby, I highly recommend her. I was actually going to post a picture of us together here, but my boob is totally hanging out in the one I have, so no. Anyway, she’s all for the natural thing too, so she was trying to help me avoid that induction and she broke my hindwaters (is that a thing? I have no idea, some of this is a blur) somewhere around 8:30 that night.

My labor began promptly afterwards and seriously, was really really painful. I lasted about three hours and dilated only one crappy centimeter before I lost it and begged, weeping, for help. Help came swiftly through a needle in my back, and let me tell you that I have never been so relieved or happy about a choice in my entire life as I was as my epidural was being administered. I traded a natural experience for a profound sense of peace that washed over me as the medication kicked in and the pain ceased, and I’m ok with that. That said, if you know anyone who has given birth to a baby without pain medication you should be in awe of that person, they are true warriors and I admire their strength and perseverance.

After I had the epidural, everyone had some rest, and I felt exceptionally calm and dilated fully in three painless hours. Early the next morning with the help of my mom, my husband, and Cori the midwife (so awesome, again), and nurses, Jane was born painlessly and was the most serene, peaceful, calm baby I have ever seen. It was a truly wonderful experience and I have been falling in love with her more every day since.

The Baby

Oh, the drama!

Sweet Smushy

Jane & Mommy

Open Green House!

Not to say that being Mommy is all I’ve been doing - I’ve also been hiding away manufacturing tons of amazing products for Exciting Event #2, OpenGreenhouse at the 14th Street Y, this Sunday, September 18 from 10-3. Michelle and I busted our butts making lots of yummy scrubs and candles in fun new scents like lemon rose, grapefruit ginger and lemongrass – we’ll post them on the website after the event to give event-comers first priority. 

OpenGreenhouse is going to be a really amazing event at a really amazing community center. I have the privilege of teaching preschool at the Y twice a week…such an awesome job, such awesome people working there and organizing this. They have tons of green businesses coming from all over the city and they’ll teach you to compost, you can recycle electronics, and people will be giving out all kinds of awesome samples, I know because I’m getting ready to prep mine now (crunch time!) The 14th Street Y is at 14th and 1st in Manhattan - hope to see you there, this Sunday, 10-3!

Ethiopian Ghimbi Coffee

I’ve been watching my downstairs neighbor’s baby, who i LOVE, and it’s sort of like having a practice baby. He comes upstairs, I put him in baby’s bjorn bouncer, I carry him in the sling, we walk the dog, we tried out the baby carrier (too bulky for pregnant lady!), I teach Ally not to lick his face. (On a side note, Ally is ridiculously cute with the baby, I can’t handle it. She goes to check on him while he’s sleeping and make sure he’s ok, she paces when he cries, she pouts when he leaves. She’s going to love having a baby of our own!) It’s been really good for me mentally, I know this is a weird thing to say but it made me think, “Oh, I like babies. I actually do want a baby, having a baby will not make me unhappy.” And that is very awesome, I think a lot of first-time pregnant women would agree with me that there are fears about how things are going to be once the baby comes. Watching James has made me feel much better.

Anyway! I can get lots of work done with James here, luckily. However, one thing I really have not been able to do, especially by myself, is make soap. With our baby’s due date drawing near, we’ve been making a big push to manufacture as much soap as we can before she arrives so that we can just ship it out and not have to worry as much about setting aside long periods of time to manufacture things - soap is by far the most time-consuming and complicated thing we make. We have two priorities: to make cool, new soaps we’ve thought of or been inspired by, and to make “old” favorites - our most popular soaps, which we are running quite low on.

So far, our most popular soap is our lime with cilantro soap, which has been written up in Chic and Green and In My Opinion. We have only two bars left! Don’t worry, more will be available July 15.

Our second most popular soap is our coffee soap (and finally I am getting to my point!!). The first time I made coffee soap it was a complete disaster. See, when you add lye (sodium hydroxide) to water, the temperature of the mixture rises. Usually, I use room temperature water with no problems. When I added lye to hot coffee, the mixture flash boiled, splashing all over me, the kitchen and Lappy, my beloved hand-me-down Mac. The kitchen and I survived unscathed, luckily Rob was here and rushed to the rescue with lots of vinegar. Lappy was not so lucky. R.I.P, Lappy. Coffee soap was something I really wanted to try so I didn’t give up, and the second try was a success. But I still have a little bit of anxiety when it comes to this soap.

Today, I made a double batch of coffee soap using Ethiopian Ghimbi coffee roasted and ground at Oslo, an awesome local coffee shop. I stop there all the time for my giant iced decaf americano, which is my favorite thing these days. This particular coffee was recommended to me by the barista, when I told her that I didn’t plan to drink the coffee, but rather, turn it into soap. Ethiopian Ghimbi coffee is exactly the kind of ingredient we want to have in our soap! Its organic, fair trade, and bird-friendly.

Ethiopia is said to be the birthplace of coffee. This particular coffee is described as “earthy, with a consistent body,” and has notes of apricot, earl grey, nutmeg and white chocolate. Since 1999, organic Ethiopian coffee farmers have been allowed to sell their coffee to the western world. The coffee is grown with almost no fertilizer, and co-ops have been organized to help trace the coffee from producer to consumer. Furthermore, Ethiopian Ghimbi coffee is bird-friendly. I didn’t know what this meant when I bought it, but it sounded good. Turns out it is! Coffee plantations are actually fantastic and bio-diverse ecosystems. Some growers have converted their traditionally shade-grown coffee bushes to sun coffee, which produces larger yields, but removes the habitat, and creates a coffee monoculture, which in turn requires more chemicals. I’m super happy with the choice of coffee and hope customers will be too.

Coffee soap always sort of smells like dirty feet when it’s first made, but that fades once the soap is cured. This coffee smelled AMAZING before, so I know it will smell awesome when it’s done curing and ready for use. It looks beautiful already, though.

Here’s one where the belly snuck in, oops!

Ethiopian Ghimbi Coffee Soap will be available for purchase July 29.

Gin ‘n Juice Soap

One of the things I really enjoy about running this business is that I get to experiment in my kitchen. It reminds me of high school science class, in a good way— I loved measuring chemicals, mixing things together, turning one thing into another. It’s also the reason I love to cook, especially when I’m making something I haven’t tried before. In this way, all of our soaps are an experiment. I do a little bit of research about my essential oils and other additives, figure out what properties I want the soap to have, and what I think will smell nice together, and I try things out. Some of our batches have been huge successes, like the lime with cilantro soap that people seem to be going wild for. Others have been less awesome. For example, I’m really not a fan of the rosemary with honeysuckle soap. I just really don’t like the smell of the honeysuckle, or the way the dried flowers stuck to my skin when I used the soap. Of course, some people really like it and Rob didn’t seem to notice either way.

One of the soaps that seems to be getting mixed reviews is our gin ‘n juice soap. Like all of the soaps, this one was an experiment. When I was working on stockpiling soap for our launch, I ordered a ton of dried fruits and berries - mostly stuff I couldn’t afford in essential oil form. One of the things I ordered was juniper berries, which I discovered is used to flavor gin. Now, I love liquor, but gin is not my favorite so I actually didn’t know this before I ordered the dried berries. Having that knowledge gave me the idea to make a soap with ground juniper berries and grapefruit essential oil, and I swear, the whole time, Snoop Dogg’s Gin ‘n Juice(uncensored!) was playing in my head.

The berries are super round and hard and I was having no luck trying to crush them, at all. I tried using a giant knife, a small knife, a mortar and pestle, and finally, my food processer (a gift from my dad, and it is lovely, and Dad, I’m sorry I abused it in this way). These berries did not want to grind up! So I ground them constantly, on high speed, until the motor in the food processor got hot. I was left with some powder (yay!), some pieces (fine), and some pretty big pieces (meh). I decided to use them anyway - I like exfoliating soap and figured other people would as well.

I was pretty excited about having a cocktail-themed soap, so I was giving it away at a pretty high rate to friends and family, in particular, my dad, who enjoys a drink or three himself. A few days later he called me up to complain - he found the soap WAY too exfoliating, aka, it hurt his skin. I promised to send him another bar to try. I also put a bar in my shower, figuring I needed to try the bar for myself. I didn’t want to sell anything that was unusable. While I did find the soap on the scratchy side, I liked it. I didn’t think it hurt, I thought it scratched my dry and itchy pregnant lady skin. I figured my dad must have sensitive skin, so the best thing to do was to sell the soap but with a strong warning. Here’s my original description of the soap:

Gin ‘n juice makes a comeback with our delicious blend of sharp, refreshing grapefruit and stimulating juniper berries. Caution to those with sensitive skin - ground juniper berries are VERY exfoliating!

A few weeks later we launched the site, and orders started coming in. I was surprised - gin ‘n juice soap was a popular selection! Then, this morning, I got some sad news! A friend of Rob’s had ordered some soap and emailed me with some feedback. He didn’t like the gin ‘n juice soap either. We love being fully open and honest about our products, so here’s what he had to say:

Just thought to give some feedback on a recent purchase of grapefruit with juniper berries soap. After a few days using it I noticed a 2 inch long scratch scabbing over on each of my arms. I had read your warning: “Caution to those with sensitive skin - ground juniper berries are VERY exfoliating!” I hadn’t expected “very exfoliating” to mean draws blood! There are pretty sharp edges on the solid materials in the soap, once the exterior of the soap itself dissolves down after a couple of days. I wonder if your recipe could do with grinding down these materials a little more? I wouldn’t feel safe letting my children use this particular soap.

I do love the soap, except for the blood.

Thanks!

You can see from his email that he is totally polite and definitely trying to be helpful. I felt terrible! I knew the soap was scratchy, but I didn’t expect it to draw blood either! As I said, this was not my experience with the soap - it had edges, but in no way hurt or broke my skin. I’m writing this entry because I want to ask you, who have ordered the grapefruit with juniper berries soap - what was your experience? Did you like it? Did it hurt your skin? Is it good for you, but not your husband or daughter? Please let me know what you think, email juliet@premsoaps.com is a good way to reach me. In the meantime, I’ve added this disclaimer to my description:

Friends, when I say very, I mean very! Some people really don’t like this soap - so if you don’t like scratchy soap, this soap is not for you. Please, be careful not to scratch yourself (unless you like it like that, naughty!)

We want using our products to be a joyful, loving experience - not a painful one! We are planning to use our new coffee grinder if we grind up juniper berries in the future. If anyone is at all disappointed with this soap, let us know – we’re happy to replace your bar with another flavor, or just issue a simple refund, no questions asked.

Mint Mojito Foot Bath

I know it’s out of season for bath salts – though it’s actually not too hot today – but I’m really loving our Mint Mojito flavored bath salts tonight. It’s super weird, I haven’t gained any weight at all since week 24 (now almost 2 whole months ago!) but for some reason, my feet are really starting to swell. I definitely had the idea that this was a weight-related problem but I guess it’s also heat-related and possibly general body deformation-related?

In any case, Rob and I went out on a long-awaited and much needed date tonight - we had sushi at home and then went to see Mike Birbiglia’s My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, which is closing this weekend. It turns out that we had both heard a version of the story he told before, but I love this story and found it very romantic and inspiring both times. Well, about halfway through the very funny performance, I noticed that my sandals, three years old and perfectly broken-in, all of a sudden felt sort of tight. And my wedding rings did too. So tight I had to unbuckle them and wear the sandals like flip flops. But, it was such a beautiful night and I was having so much fun being out with the man I love that we decided to have some gelato (thank you, baby living inside me!) and walk around the West Village, despite my giant puffy feet and cankles.

By the time we got home I was desperate for some relief and I decided it was finally time to try soaking my feet in salt water to try to relieve some of the swelling. Rob, very, very sweetly mixed me up a super strong batch of salt water using our delicious smelling Mint Mojito bath salt and almost too hot water in a way-too-embarrassing-to-post-a-picture-of giant tupperware. I won’t lie, an actual mojito would improve the experience, but caffeine-free diet coke is good too. I’ve had my feet in the water about 10 minutes and I can tell that they are almost normal size…checking…well, still cankle-y, but much, much better than before. Also, my feet are no longer covered in New York grime, and smell like yummy lime and mint. Maybe I can have a foot rub, too? [rob: don’t push your luck! but yes, maybe.]