We bought a House!

The New House!

It's taken over a year of searching and about 4 declined offers, but last Tuesday, the hubby and I closed on a sweet townhouse. It's in an L shape with a small screened patio and balcony in the corner. 

Now it's time to do a little fixing up prior to getting everything moved in. I really want to remove the popcorn texture from the ceiling. I watched some YouTube videos and picked up some tools at the hardware store. I decided to do a test run in the upstairs bathroom. 

Weeell that was probably the smartest decision connected with this project that I made. Our popcorn ceilings are painted with what seems to be a water resistant paint. The process involves wetting down the ceiling and scraping off the popcorn. Since the water won't soak in, the popcorn doesn't want to come off. I had more success removing the wallpaper as it got wet than the popcorn. Since the upstairs bathroom is not a priority, I am marking that as a failure and moving on. We will be keeping the popcorn ceilings.

The Kitchen Ceiling

Now we need to get a new refrigerator, the downstairs ceiling needs to be painted to cover some mis-matched areas from some old light fixtures that were removed before we bought the house, and the living room walls need to be patched and painted. Saturday our plan was to pick out the refrigerator and start on the patching and painting. 

Haha! Here's what really happened. We measured the living room to see if/how our shelves will fit. Decided we need another piece for the TV that happens to be on sale this weekend only. Picked out a paint color for the living room and measured for the refrigerator. 

The Upper Cabinet Removed

Off to the store. We had already tried to get a refrigerator, but we didn't have an accurate measurement and we were within our inch of margin of error. Sure enough the refrigerator we wanted wouldn't fit. It was 3/8 inch too tall for our space. So we went back home and ended up taking out the cabinet over the refrigerator. That did the trick! Now we have a space 83 inches tall and 9 feet wide in which to fit our new refrigerator. Oh, and some more patching and painting to be done.

OK, back to the store. We had one last look at our options and picked out a beauty. We blew up the budget on this, but I'm happy with our choice. It's a Samsung stainless steel french door model with LED lights and an ice-maker and water in the door. It will be delivered next week. I can't wait! I'll have cold water to drink again and can fix dinner at home instead of take out.

Next it is off to pick up the parts for the entertainment center/living room shelves. We originally were going with a $400 entertainment center wall that fits with our current shelves, but after going way over budget on the refrigerator and looking over the overall plan, we modified our plan and only spent about $80. Win! But that was 3 hour excursion. 

On our way back, we stopped at the hardware store and picked up the tools we need for the patching and painting project. We still need to get the paint, but that store was closed. by then it was after 7pm, so we dropped everything off and called it a day. 

I wonder how much I'll be able to get done Monday after work?

Should a Small Craft Business Accept Credit Cards

Recently I was reading a forum where small business crafters were debating the costs associated with taking credit cards at craft shows. One person decided against taking credit cards due to the fees that the credit cards charge. She did not want to pass that expense to her customers.

My husband & I used to sell candles at craft fairs and flea markets. At first it was cash only. The products ranged from $4 to $25 each. The day we started taking credit cards our sales increased at least 50%. Not only did we get more customers, but more importantly the amount each customer spent increased dramatically.

Also, when someone is counting the cash in their pocket, they are less likely to make an impulse purchase. How many times has someone walked away because they wanted to be sure that your product was the one they REALLY wanted to spend their cash on or come to find out they didn't have enough with them. Then compare that to how often that person actually came back to purchase your product.

Accepting credit cards will pay for itself with increased sales without having to increase your prices or charge a credit surcharge.

Make Mine a Hobby!

I have gotten very discouraged while making my business plan. You see, I am unemployed and there just isn't enough money to really start a business right now. So for now my soap making obsession will just be a hobby. You know the old saying, "It takes money to make money." By the time I am ready to transition from a hobby to a business, then I will be more experienced and have an idea of what people want.

I will continue to post what is happening in my crafty world here. I have so many ideas rolling around in my head! Gel candles, aquarium soaps, natural buckwheat heating/cooling pads, gift sets, lotions, body sprays, sugar and salt scrubs. I just need some cash to get me started. Time to work on the household budget and see where I can shave a few dollars.

Who wants to test some soap for me?

I have two soaps ready to test. The first one is called Simple Castile. It is a fragrance free Vegan-friendly with no additives.

The other is called Cafe au Lait. It is a goat's milk soap made with coffee for color and coffee grounds for exfoliation. There are no added fragrances.

If you are interested in becoming a product tester, please register here: http://ping.fm/RHopy I will send a free sample size soap (about 1 ounce). All I ask is that you try the soap as a facial soap, hand soap and as a body soap and then fill out an online survey to let me know how you liked it. Those who fill out the survey will continue to be eligible to test new products as they become available. Future product ideas include more soap (of course), lotion, bath fizzes, and liquid soap.

P.S. Feel free to forward the link to any friends you think might be interested.

Next Steps: A Business Plan

I haven't been making any new soap this week. I have been researching what it will take to get a business started and how much it will cost. First I need to decide how the business will be organized. Will I be a sole proprietorship, or a corporation? A sole proprietorship will require me to register a fictitious name unless I use my name as my business name. If I choose a corporation I don't need to worry about a fictitious name; however, there are multiple types of corporation to choose from, each with its own benefits and drawback. For a small business like what I'm trying to be the most common corporation type is a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). If I choose to become a corporation, this is the one that I will most likely choose. Next is registering the LLC with both the state and the city, getting a resale certificate and a Federal Tax ID number. All this can be done fairly quickly and easily, but it does take some time and of course money.
This brings me to the rest of what I have been doing for the last few days. I need to put together a business plan. Even if I never need to take it to a bank or an investor, I need to have one for myself so that I can have a written plan of what I want to accomplish and how to get there. It can be revised as needed along the way, but it will give me a place to keep track of short term and long term goals, what costs I foresee coming up and how I am meeting my goals as time goes on.
There are many questions that need to be answered. What is my mission statement? What are my company values? How much money will it take to get started? When do I need the money? Where will the money come from? What products will I be selling? How much will each one cost me to make? How will I price them? Where will I sell them? Do I want to have wholesale accounts or just sell them retail myself? What about economy or premium product lines? Do I need product liability insurance? Is there a plan for expansion? I still haven't answered all of these questions and I'm sure that I am leaving out many other topics that I will need to consider. But I am starting to get an idea of how much money I'll need for the first year. It's a much larger number than I would have thought, but then again part of writing the business plan is looking your business square in the face to see what needs to be done.

The Saga of the Second Soap

On Saturday I attempted my second soap recipe. Full of confidence from my first batch, I set everything up and got started. The new recipe called for triple strength coffee instead of water and condensed goat's milk added once the oil and lye reached trace. I weighed all the ingredients, set the oils on the stove (no heat yet), and poured the lye into the coffee. As the lye and coffee started to react and heat up the glass container and thermometer were steamed up and then... CRACK! The glass pitcher I was using for the lye solution split and the lye solution leaked all over the countertop.

Fortunately part of my preparation was a sink full of vinegar water to neutralize the lye and a jug of full strength vinegar standing by. I poured vinegar over the spill and placed the broken pitcher in the sink. Then, sopped it all up with towels and tossed them in the washer with more vinegar.

I have now replaced the broken pitcher with an 8-cup pyrex measurer. I later found out that a plastic pitcher with the number 5 and the letters "PP" next to the recycle symbol on the bottom will be able to take the heat of the lye reaction.

All in all, everything turned out OK, because I was wearing the proper protective clothing and had prepared to handle a chemical spill before it happened. If you have never made soap from scratch (using lye) before, please take the time to educate yourself on the proper safety precautions.

Take 2: This time I chilled the coffee (room temperature here is nearly 80°) and poured the lye into the coffee slowly never letting the solution get over 150°. In the meantime, the oils were on the stove at low heat just to melt the solids. When both the lye solution and the oils were at about 110° I mixed them together with a stick blender. When they reached trace, I poured half of the soap into the mold and sprinkled some coffee grounds over the top. I mixed 3 tablespoons of coffee grounds into the remaining soap and poured it into the mold then topped it all with whole coffee beans. I am pleased with the outcome, but I need to rework the recipe so it will be a vegetarian friendly soap in the future.

My first soap is done!

Last night I made my first batch of soap from scratch. Well technically my second, but the one I made before was over 20 years ago. The new soap is a version of Castile Soap with 75% olive oil and 25% Coconut oil.

I used a cold process, oven process (CPOP) method. This just means that after I made the soap I put it in a low-temp oven for an hour then turned off the heat and let it cool naturally overnight. It helps to speed up the saponification process and reduce cure time. In layman's terms the soap can be used right away and will be fully ready 2-3 weeks earlier than conventional cold process soap.

Here are some of the notes I took while making my soap last night...
1) The canning pot I purchase just for making soap is too big. The stick blender was barely submerged and there was some splattering.
2) I used filtered tap water chilled in the refrigerator. The ambient room temperature was about 75° so the coconut oil was slushy.
3) Using the stick blender, it took about 5 minutes to get to light trace (the point where the sodium hydroxide and the oils have emulsified and will no longer separate). The soap was poured into the molds at light trace.
4) Soap was unmolded and cut at about 16 hours. The soap was firm, but still very easy to cut. I could definitely use a mitre box to make more uniform cuts.

There are more photos at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seashore-Crafts/127584157282519.