Soapy Holidays and a Soapy Deal!

Holiday Shopping with All Things Herbal

Through Monday Only:  

Get FREE SHIPPING with every order of $30 or more!

It's the time of year for All Things Herbal's annual Cyber Monday Sale.  This year we are offering Free Shipping on orders of $30 or more when you enter a secret code at checkout.  Also, receive a bonus gift when you include a special phrase in the comments section.  These rare codes begin NOW and are good through Cyber Monday, December 2, at midnight.  To be sent the email, including the code and special phrase,

sign up for our newletter at this link:

http://allthingsherbal.com/index.cfm/e-mail-list-sign-up

Check out our ribbon wrapped soaps HERE, dressed up in a variety of ribbons, perfect for holiday gifting or as a treat for yourself! 

Everyone loves to open a present.  And, when I uncover my soap molds and cut the batch into bars, just seeing that sea of wavy soap tops is for me like opening a present!

A holiday classic - a Cinnamon Oatmeal bar.  Swirls of cinnamon and oatmeal with our blend of cinnamon, apples, and berries...makes this soap almost good enough to eat. 

The perfect little gift of cheer.  Mint-a-sota, layers of green & white with a generous sprinkling of peppermint leaves and scented with our minty blend of spearmint and peppermint.

And,we can't forget Cherry Almond Oatmeal, a holiday blend of black cherries and toasted almonds.

Enjoy this beautiful season.  Merry Christmas!

Christine Kennedy

www.AllThingsHerbal.com

Soaps for October

Now that we are smack dab in the middle of Fall, it's about time I shared some pictures of soaps & scents appropriate for the season.  Autumn Splash is a new soap this year in deep orange with dark vanilla chunks.

A fall assortment of herbal soaps.

This one is a cutom order in a variety of our bars - cut in half & labeled for Autumn.

So there you have it!  Some great colors and scents for Fall.

Christine Kennedy
www.AllThingsHerbal.com

African Hope Soap

It's always fun to share a passion with your family!  My youngest daughter, Colleen, has always enjoyed helping me with our family business, whether that's wrapping soap, making labels, bouncing ideas off of each other or helping out at craft shows.  She's also notorious for taking many, perhaps too many pictures with her camera. Just for this post I had almost a hundred pictures to choose from!

In December, Colleen will be graduating from college.  Even more exciting, for her, she will also be leaving for a 3 week trip with six students from SquareOne to Kenya and Uganda.  SquareOne is a student run nonprofit group seeking to empower local economic development by creating lasting business ventures in rural communities in the developing world.  As a fundraising adventure, Colleen and I created a soap specifically for raising funds to help the communities in Kenya and Uganda. 

Colleen in our soap workshop holding a few logs of our African Hope Soap.

Here are a few of the soaps, just cut into bars.  Dubbed "African Hope Soap", the square bars feature a very warm fragrance that we created and blended together. It's a spicy-sweet, musky blend with hints of deep sandalwood, cinnamon and orange and soft notes of vanilla, patchouli and lemongrass.

When we were talking about colors for this new soap, we decided to add in some chunks of vanilla bars that I had made earlier.  We love the deep brown colors.

The vanilla in the soap turns darker brown the more it is exposed to air.

This is a shot of the soap still in the mold.  You can see the brown and orange chunks peeking out from the soft, pale green soap.  A few swirls with our spatula and we left the soap to rest overnight.

Colleen, cutting the soap into logs.

Eight logs ready to cut into bars!

Designing the labels, printing and cutting them out with a paper cutter.

Colleen and her group will be selling these soaps this weekend at the Saint John's and Saint Ben's Homecoming Football Game in Collegeville, Minnesota.  Stop by and see the SquareOne booth if you are in the area.

  The finished soaps!

You may also support their trip by purchasing a bar from our site: http://AllThingsHerbal.com/index.cfm/African-Hope-Soap-Square-One-CSB-SJU.  We've donated all the bars of soap to SquareOne, so 100% of the proceeds goes directly to support their trip.  To learn more about Square One, follow them and cheer them on at: https://www.facebook.com/csbsjuSquareOne. Thanks for your support!

Christine Kennedy

www.AllThingsHerbal.com

An Art Crawl

I’m in awe of the date on the calendar.  It's the very end of August and that means, ready or not, summer is coming to a close.  We've enjoyed being a part of many great art shows this summer and we are ending the season with something special, something we haven't participated in before - an Art Crawl.

 

Here's one of the signs along the way to our location, site #4. 

Arts off 84 has eight different sites, each filled with artists, that you can visit.  For more information about the vendors at each location and a map, check out their website: www.artsoff84.com  

Along your drive, you'll pass pastoral scenes like this.  I took this picture along highway 84, just a few miles before our site.

This was us on Friday afternoon, setting up our tent together.

I have a few of the side pieces together.

Tables next!

Early Saturday morning and everyone is ready to go.

Today was a perfect day for an art crawl!  Do you have plans for the long weekend?  Have you been to an art crawl?  There is still time to catch this one.  We'll be there tomorow too, from 9 am- 5 pm, Sunday, September 1st.

Whatever your plans, have a great Labor Day weekend!

Christine

Midsummer Faire & Celtic Celebration

Summer is the time of year that we travel to outdoor festivals and exhibit our herbal soaps.  Last Saturday we went to the Midsummer Faire & Celtic Celebration at The Farm on St Mathias in Brainerd, Minnesota.  The weather was a bit challenging, with more like fall temps than July ones and some strong wind gusts all day.  I almost lost the tent a few times to the wind...but no pain no gain.

 

 

I love all things Irish and this is a fun show with lots going on and wonderful customers. The folks who put this show on are very helpful and the setting on the farm couldn't be more beautiful.

 

 

 

Here's a peek at all the happenings.

 

What's a Celtic Festival without sheep shearing?

 

 

Live Irish Music

 

 

Spinners

 

Face Painting for the kids

 

Our Irish Soaps

 

A Blacksmith Demonstration

 

Hens to watch

and eggs to discover!

 

Horses

 

and stacks upon stacks of hay.

 

 

Till next year~ Féach leat níos déanaí!

 

Christine Kennedy

www.AllThingsHerbal.com

Summer Reading and the Joy of Herbal Books

Reading in an Adirondack chair - now that's what I call summer!

Today I slipped outside and enjoyed rereading a few of my favorite herb books.  What a summer treat!  I not only felt rejuvenated being outside but inspired with some new ideas!

One of my all time favorites gems is this book by Melissa Placzek. Her charming books are filled with her watercolors and recipes for little indulgences plus, she's a Minnesotan.  I love the title too, as I often feel chin deep in bubbles!

Ahhhh….looking over recipes and planning for the hot days of summer.

Let's make gallons and gallons of iced tea with fresh mint leaves, lemons and honey.

Looking over the meaning of different of flowers, books on the Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway and Pierre-Joseph Redoute.

And, I finished with Tasha Tudor.  Her books are classics and I think of them as comfort food for the soul, with their old fashioned simple beauty.

I hope you all enjoy some treasured time with books this summer.

~Christine