Just Sent Out My First Custom Order!

A lady my mother works with was having a tea party this weekend and about a month ago she had asked my mother if I made custom orders for party favors. But of course I do...well, at least now I do :)

I spent a couple weeks designing some new yummy teas that wouldn't be too "herbally" and tasted fabulous and created 40 tea samples with 3 bags each. If I say so myself they turned out wonderfully!

My mother took them to her this morning and we shall see what the reaction is next week. It was a blast making them, knowing that 30-40 women were about to be introduced to The Om Intention and that I may make a few new friends.

This little venture made me think...if I could do favors and make labels specific to the event, say weddings or baby showers or even tea parties, I could spread the word about my shop even more and have fun in the process! Because making those tea samples were a lot of fun!

Here's to new business, to getting my name out there, and to filling time in my severely unemployed days. Hahaha

Bath Bombs Away!

I just got confirmation that my new supplies are on their way and I should have them by the end of the week! And a long weekend! Oh joy!

So, I'm getting plenty of stuff to make bath bombs, going to make them all natural and herbal, of course. I also put in another order (and got some nice essential oils for a new customers too) of additional stuff to make Halloween and Winter themed bombs too! So excited.

What else is new....Trying to put the finishing touches on my new website www.theomintention.com and I think my next tea will be a flu-fighting tea since so many people around me are getting sick and MD/DC/VA is getting ready for a horrible flu season. Why not give them something to help fight it BEFORE you get hit with it? I know I'll be drinking a lot more tea in the coming months. I need to save my vacation/sick time for my wedding in May.

See that dress? That's my dress! I know the front looks nice but the back is amazing! It laces up like a corset but with these thick ribbons and it is so beautiful. Le sigh...le heave. 8 more months. ACK!

Weekend Plans and Really Awesome Test Tubes!

I'll try to take pictures of them this weekend once they are put together, but I have this really great set of Test-tube-like spice containers that sit in this holder. They are really great and we had planned to use them, a year ago, as spice containers but then went to Ikea and got addicted to spice tins instead. These poor glass Spice-tubes have been sitting around and I finally figured out what I'm going to do with them! Use them as a container for a Bath Salt gift! 1 bath salt in each of the 6 tubes! Now to create 2 more bath salts, which shouldn't take long :)

One of my coworkers has also started going through these new mints that come in fun little plastic test-tubes and he's giving them to me, so voila! Bath Salt Samplers. I only have 2 right now, but give it time...he's addicted to those babies!

Just ordered new jars and a host of bath bomb making substances. Can't wait for them to get here, feels like Christmas! Won't be able to work with them until next weekend though. A lesson in patience.

Oh, in fabulous and completely personal news.....my Father-in-law-to-be has offered to pay for our wedding caterer! A serious chunk that we now don't have to fret over. Now we can continue to pay down debts and put $$ into savings for our future abode. Yays! I can't even begin to tell you how happy and relieved that makes me!

Mini-Vacation, Upcoming Products, And Announcements

As many of you know I will be leaving the area on Thursday morning and returning Sunday morning. I am traveling to Massachusetts to attend my little sister's wedding and secure some of my own wedding items for next May. During this time I will NOT be closing down shop but I may not be able to check it as often as I'd like. Please note that I will attack any purchases the moment I get home and finish crashing.

Some fun products I have just finished researching and will be attempting this week, for hopeful posting by Wednesday night:

Anxie-Tea

A great new herbal tea made of some, what else, organic herbs that help reduce tension and stress in the body! I'm going a little light on the Valerian root since I don't want you all falling asleep. hahaha

Cleanse-Happy Tea

Another great tea that protects, cleans out, and otherwise makes your little liver very, very happy! Not bad to have around after a few months of binging or alcohol consumption, etc. Hmmm, better get this baby out before the holidays .

Breath Easy Herbal Bath Salt

Along with Pink Himilayan Salt and Epsom salt I'll be combining some great aromatic herbs and essential oils (only 100% therapeutic grade, of course) for a bath designed to help stimulate the lungs and airways. Perfect for those who suffer from fall allergies or tend to get those nasty bronchial bugs each year.

Also, big announcement, I have decided it is time to break up my shop a bit. While I love my tarot readings and will continue to do them I will be segregating the little buggers to another shop of mine which I opened years ago as a Buyer shop and had grand intentions of using some day. I will let you all know when I do this but expect to see my listings deminish as I move the spiritual store out of TheOmIntention and into BohemianChick.

This Weekend's Plans

Well folks, tonight is beef and beer date night. Tonight, the hunny and I grab a steak and a beer and go see Harry Potter 6: Half Blood Prince. Looking forward to it!

This weekend will, as usual, be a weekend of WORK! We have wedding planning to do and I desperately need to do some work on my Artfire and Etsy shops. I need some better pictures, I need to adjust my tags to they show up more often on search engines, I need to go through my descriptions and make sure they are accurate and spelled correctly (eeps)...and I need to post new items!

This weekend, sunlight permitting, I will be posting my new set of 5, count them, 5 tinctures! I am also happy to let you know that I have tried out my lovely new Dead Sea Mud mask and it has worked beautifully! I will also be posting that as well. If I have time I also want to make my new oil into a cream...but I don't have the wax, so we'll see how far I get with that. Yummy, fun weekend! What are your plans??

Why I Love/Hate Facebook

So I joined up with Facebook a week or so ago, both as myself and as a fan page for The Om Intention shop (feel free to become a fan..ack, I have "fans", I'm famous! Yay!). At first nothing happened, then I found some people I knew and "friended" them, now I'm getting in touch with all my old college friends and even my college roommate! It's been so wonderful seeing how everyone is doing but it is becoming addicting and perhaps dangerous!

See, the problem is we are getting ready to invite 87 people to our wedding thanks to a few unexpected direct invites made by my mother which is a lot more than we anticipated for our small little wedding. Now I'm seeing my college roommate, my dear friends that I shared so much with for 4 years of fun, embarrassment, and drunken moments that I will NEVER share with anyone else....and I want to invite them too! Oh hell, I want to invite EVERYONE! Come one, come all! Get ready to have some great food and do some ridiculous amounts of dancing! I want to shout it from the rooftops....then I think of the catering bill...how many more favors we'll have to order....and I begin to calm down.

So I came up with a plan! If you all buy TONS of tea and herbs from me between now and January I will have enough extra income to invite everyone to my wedding! And you'll have lots of wonderful tea and herbs and the heartwarming feeling of helping me make my wedding dreams come true. hehehe

Wedding Plans and MOBs

My mother is FINALLY getting excited about the wedding, thank goodness! I've been going what feels like boxing rounds with her and she has been second-guessing everything, right down to our color scheme. Then she came at me crying with the feeling that she isn't involved in the wedding at all and I'm her only child, etc.

I'll be honest, as much as I love my mother, and I LOVE my mother, I was getting...frustrated. Then I realized that my partner and I had been planning this whole thing together, looking at pictures, going back and forth on how things would look, etc., and my mother hadn't even seen anything yet and was going on her own imagination.

So I took a couple hours the other day and put together a little visual presentation using the pictures we liked, colors, ideas, actual products we were going to get, etc. She called me after looking at it and I could hear the excitement in her voice. She had some good points and some good ideas, and it was so nice!

Weddings, Barns, and Caterers. Oh My!

So the date is set, the venue is set, now to find an "approved" caterer. That's right, next summer I will be getting married. No chapel or church wedding for us, though, we're doing it rustic. A historical barn in the middle of an orchard. So pretty! Also very fortuitous as it's going to be held on Beltane. We won't be able to have a bonfire but we will incorporate a little hand fasting in the ceremony. Neither of us are true Pagans but we do enjoy some of the older traditions (her-Italian, mine-Irish).

So now the trick is to find a caterer. Because the barn is a historical site they have a "list" but won't send it to me. They keep teasing me with "tell us what kind of food you want and we'll tell you which caterers we approve can do it." So what do I do? I go the back route. I searched the Internet for caterers that specifically had worked that venue before. After all, if they had done a wedding there before why couldn't they do a wedding there now?

Ok, now I need all of your opinions on this. We are torn...clambake or brunch. Here's the thing:

We love both ideas equally.

If we do a brunch people would have to arrive the Friday night before but would then have the rest of the afternoon to visit the area, drive home, spend time with family, etc. With a brunch we'd also be able to fly out that night for our honeymoon. With a brunch we'd also save a lot of money and not have to worry about a bar (we have friends and family who are alcoholics). It would also keep most of the weekend free for people. (also kids wouldn't be as cranky as they can get at a night-time wedding)

If we were to do a clambake it would be in the early evening and people would have to stay Saturday night. It would leave less time for people to socialize later on, but everyone is really excited about the possibility of having a traditional New England clambake. Doing it later means we'll probably have more people dancing (which is important) and the twinkle-lights in the barn would have more of an effect. Because of the novelty of the event we'd probably get more of our friends to make the long haul for it. Doing it later also means that we'd have to stay the night and go to the honeymoon the next morning or leave really late and get in even later. But we'd also have the opportunity to have a few people over my parent's house for a small post-wedding get together and bonfire which would be super fun! Give others a chance to come and visit who couldn't make it to the wedding but live in the area.

Alright people, I need opinions and thoughts and I need them soon! Help!!!!