Happy New Year, and over sharing again ⭐️

I hope you all had a great holiday season.  

I have previously blogged pretty consistently over the years, we all got through Covid isolation in any way we could.  And then life kept lifing, as the kids say.  I opened a store in Ashland, OR, where this business originated, and then almost immediately closed it and ended up pursuing legal action against the property owners of the building.  The experience was a big expensive bummer and I realized that I know nothing about picking a location, have no business signing a commercial lease, and I didn't want a store in Ashland after all.

My last kid moved out and 3 hours away, my long marriage ended, I moved myself and my business to Portland.  Wow, that was quite a sentence.

I love living in Portland, I have a house here that I bought in 2019 as a fixer upper, investment property.  Now it's my home, still a fixer upper, gulp.  I live here with my adult daughter and her girlfriend, they are both college students.

Besides loving Portland and appreciating some distance from Ashland, I am really excited to run my business here and take advantage of what resources a larger population offers a business.  I was able to outsource the shipping of all of my products to a very local, small business fulfillment center, which frees up a lot of responsibility, so I do not need shipping employees or space now.  I do have a small work space where we fill and label bottles, and am thrilled that I also have a lovely next door neighbor, stay at home mom who makes almost all of the samples.  Her sons made Christmas money folding and putting stickers on boxes.  It's a pretty wholesome set up. 

I have been able to outsource a lot of the administrative work as well, so in theory, I could work from anywhere.  I am not quite there yet, but working toward it.  The PNW winters are not new to me, but Portland's winter weather is wild and I'd love to just be in California next winter, at least for part of the time, so that is a goal I am focussed on.  I have some Bay Area and So Cal friends to see, and maybe I can get an airbnb recommendation from one of you?

Thanks for reading, I know not everyone cares, but the previous overshares were well received, so here I am again, in rebuild mode.

💕 lynn