Years ago, while raising my four children; (Christine, Steve, Bryan and Terry) I had managed a cake baking and decorating business, making and decorating all kinds of cakes, cookies and candy creations. My son Terry knew that I really enjoyed having my own business and one evening while talking to me on the phone he said, "Mom, you can do it again, you are very creative, you are good with people and you did well with the cake business." "I will give you whatever money you need to get supplies to get started, just do it!!!" I said, "ok, I will talk to Chris and let you know".

Chris is a wonderful "Home School" mom of five. Joshua and Matthew have already both graduated, Rebekah graduates this year, and Victoria and Josiah, are 6 and 3, and are being home-schooled as well.

Chris and I talked over Terry’s idea thought that it was a wonderful thing for Terry to do, and decided we wanted to make homemade soaps. We love homemade soaps, and we figured we could do it. So, the three of us came up with equal amounts of money, and we bought our first supplies from Bramble Berry. We needed a name for our business and wanted it to remind people of natural products. Therefore, in the year 2003, our business "Earth E Scentials" was born.

We started our business out by making the translucent melt and pour, and worked our way into the Goat Milk. However, Hand-Milled Soap is a growing favorite. Some of our best selling and favorite soaps are our Hand Milled Lavender with ground lavender and Bramble Berry’s "Provincial Lavender" essential oil in it, our Hand Milled Oatmeal made with ground oatmeal and using the Bramble Berry "Oatmeal Milk & Honey" fragrance, and our latest creation, Hand Milled Calendula (using Calendula flowers that I raised in my flower garden) with Patchouli Fragrance. I have 13 grandkids, and they all love trying out the soaps, and some of them even give us ideas on names and fragrances for our products.

We have added to our list of homemade items, Lotion Bars, Lotion Sticks, Perfume Sticks, to match the soaps, Lip Balm, Bath and Shower Gels, Bath Salts and are looking to add more to our line as we go along.

Terry’s wife offered to have a group of her friends in for a soap party so we could introduce our products. It was a great success. From that party we did several more home parties. We even had a business owner call us to put some of our products in their shop; and a flower shop called and she put some of our products in her shop.

We do a few "Church and Craft Bazaars" each year (see photo). This has been a lot of fun for us and they’ve all been great successes.

Thanks to many e-mails, back and forth with Anne Marie and her workers, we got advice on supplies we needed to get started. We use some of the Bramble Berry recipes, but most of our recipes, we come up with on our own.

We are planning on creating a website so that we can begin shipping our products more places. We are looking forward to my son Bryan helping us to build a website.

As you can tell, we are just so excited about our business, and I’m looking forward, to May, 2007, to retiring from my full-time job as a Secretary in the Commonwealth to working full-time in our business.

Thanks Anne Marie and all your employees who are so willing to help and to share when we have questions. You all are the BEST!

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