It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

The holiday season is getting started. It’s late summer, and my whole house smells like pumpkin pie. Not because I get to make pie, doggone it, but because I am making pumpkin spice soap.

Having a retail business, where you manufacture all your own products, throws the seasons ENTIRELY off. See, here’s how it works. I need to have all the Christmas products shipping from my site during November, to make sure that all shipments arrive in time. And most people start shopping early. So I’d actually better have everything up and ready by October. Which means my wholesale customers will want everything by October. Which means I have to ship to them in September. So I need to make everything in August – but I have to test the scents first. I’ll make test batches in July. So, June, I’m ordering stuff that smells like Christmas trees and cranberries.

Crazy. Now, holiday production in full swing, initial wholesale orders shipped out, re-stocks are going on, and it’s so hot outside that the concrete is sizzling and I am up to my elbows in Pumpkin Spice. The dog has bogarted the space in front of the fan, on the basis that he’s wearing a fur coat and needs it more. He hasn’t moved off the cool tile floor in six hours. My husband, lovely kind man that he is, has been bringing me cool drinks and telling me I’m insane. I am sweating like a Gatorade commercial. My shirt smells like apple cider and I have pine fragrance in my hair somewhere.

And you know what my brain is doing? It’s telling me I need to think about spring and wondering what Daffodil would be like in a soap. Easter egg pastel shades, delicate floral scents…..

I hate my brain and the things it says. I’m considering poking it with a q-tip until it shuts up.