Bettacreek - New home? Plus a pic of some of the ladies here

[Bettacreek]

That sounds good! This is how I do my beekeeping too. Everytime there is a modest profit, I grow it a bit more and make things a bit easier. Gotta keep chugging along.

Now how do you come up with these flavors? Does it just come to you?

It makes life easier to grow a little at a time, instead of jumping in with huge investments. Huge investments might not turn out. I'd rather waste $50-$100 on something than a thousand. As for the scents, mostly I just pour over the fragrance supplier's site. The anise soap is named Black Ice because it's multi-use... Smells like black licorice, but is great for fishermen, so just calling it anise or black licorice didn't feel right, lol.


Deb, I have the feeling I'd cut more than just the soap with one of them! And my soap would STILL be cut wrong! Lol.

 

[Bettacreek]

Finally got my castor oil and cocoa butter in from Soapers Choice. I've saved over $0.60/oz on the cocoa butter and $0.21/oz on the castor oil by purchasing in bulk. I've been incredibly sick lately, having a hard time just getting a drink or moving. I've been really stiff and sore. My glands in my neck are so swollen that you can see the lumps. I've just started taking ibuprofen for it, and it's REALLY been helping. I can drink SWIGS of fluids, instead of suffering over tiny little sips. I can eat too, lol. So, hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to going to the auction (1 hour drive) to check out plant starts and the poultry barn. I have two packages to ship out as well. Plus then once the day settles down, I'll have to start cranking out lotion bars for the show on Saturday.
I'm also waiting to hear back from people on swapping hatching eggs for my soaps and such. I had a lot of interest in it, but haven't heard back from anyone after asking what all they were interested in from my end. Hopefully they're still interested though. Guess we'll wait and see.

 

[Denim Deb]

Hope you feel better soon.

 

[Bettacreek]

Thank you! Me too! I've been having terrible night sweats, and FREEZING while sweating. Last night the boyfriend was on the edge of the bed because he kept running away from me, because I was soaking the bed and freezing him as well. I just don't get the whole sweating when you're cold thing. :/

 

[Bettacreek]

Went to auction and came back with seven dozen eggs for $6. I paid up to $2.25/dozen (pekin duck eggs) all the way down to $0.25/dozen. One dozen cost me $1.75, the rest were $0.50 or under. The $1.75 one was for Americanas, $0.50/doz for easter eggers (dunno what they are, just blue eggs), and one that was $0.25/doz actually look like serama eggs. One dozen were random large brown eggs. I'm debating on hatching these or just putting them in the fridge. I could get at least $.85 per random chick at auction, which would be worth my money if one or two hatched, but breakfast sounds good too, especially at $0.50/dozen! At least half of them will go into the fridge. I figure if I can hatch one chick out of six eggs, that'll cover breakfast for four of us for three days, plus the other six eggs that went into the incubator. Sounds like a deal to me! Duck eggs will all be put into the incubator, hopefully with most of them hatching. Then I can butcher most of the drakes out for dinner. I don't even think I'll be picking up the three pairs of pekins anymore... I can just keep getting eggs from the auctions and selling chicks instead of selling eggs online. The pekin duck eggs haven't been going for much online anyways ($1.99 for a dozen, what the hey?!) I figure if I spend about $3 per dozen at the auction, I'll probably save money anyways, instead of having to feed adult birds to get them. The purebred chicks and "specialty" chicks (easter eggers, etc) go for more than the $0.85, that's just the price of random chicks.

ETA: Six dozen made it to the incubator. One of the dozen that made it to the fridge had a detached aircell, the other 11 just sounded better as breakfast than as poultry. A few are the brown random eggs, and a few are the random blue eggs. All the purebreds made it to the incubator.

 

[Denim Deb]

Good luck! Hope you get a good hatch rate.

 

[Bettacreek]

So... Today is the last day to prep for the show, and I'm being a lazy arse. I did finally get a dresser for the boys, and stopped at the greenhouse. Ended up coming home with several four packs for ten bucks... two of broccoli, one of wax peppers, one of bell peppers, and one of tomatoes for the boyfriend. I also have three different types of flowers, also in four packs, which she gave to us for free. I'm going to call them soon and see if we can work out a bulk deal to get that plot planted up. Next year, however, we're going to be starting everything from seeds. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for starts every year.

Now, back off to work on stuff for the show tomorrow!

 

[Bettacreek]

Well, all of my prep work is done. I don't have a lot for this show, but it's a small one, so I'm not too worried about it.
Goat milk soaps 4oz - 83ish, selling at $2.75 or 4/$10
Salt Bars 7.5oz - 10ish, selling at $5.50 or 2/$10
Guest size Salt Bars 2oz - 6ish, selling at $1.50
Laundry Bars - 8, selling at $1.50 or $4 for a total kit
Laundry Kits - 22ish, selling at $1.50 or $4 for the total kit
Candles - 12, selling at $6
Lotion Bars - 18, selling at $3

So, I have a little over $400 worth of merchandise, if everything is sold at the lowest price.

Candles, lotion bars and salt bars are my new additions, so I didn't add a lot of these for this show. All of the hard work is done for them for future shows though, so if they sell well, then I can really amp up production. The hardest part is doing the labels. I HATE making labels. For one, I can't design worth a sh*t, and for two, even with online templates made specifically for the stick-on labels, they DO NOT LINE UP, so you have to really tinker with them, print it out on regular paper, tweak it, print on regular paper, tweak it, etc, etc until it's perfect, THEN you can finally start printing labels. I can make at least a hundred lotion bars in the time it takes me to get labels ready for them. Candles, I could make a few dozen. I seriously, seriously loathe designing labels, lol. But, they're done for candles AND lotion bars, so I can really amp production for the next show, and see which scents sell this show. I'm hoping to put about $300 back into my items, but it will probably take a few more shows, especially with money starting to get low. I'm just hoping that I don't have to wait til the end of the year to put the money into it, because I really, really want to add scrubs and another soap recipe (this one being a shea/cocoa butter recipe without goatmilk). The new soap recipe has already been formulated, and actually costs the exact same price as the goatmilk recipe I currently have, so that is going to be awesome... I can charge the same price as the goatmilk recipe! Anyways, off to bed... four hours of sleep before a show is going to kill me!

 

[Denim Deb]

Good luck! Hopefully they'll sell well.

 

[lazyday]

I hope you had a good sell day.