August News!
Summer has been sizzling, perhaps a little too much for you. The rest of us are enjoying the heat while it lasts, as Fall is just around the corner in our part of the world. Wherever you are, we hope you are staying cool!
Oil of the Month: Coconut Oil
We thought you might be interested in learning more about the ingredients that we use in our products, and why they are so good for you! This month we are going to talk about coconut oil.
One of the most common base oils used in soap making is coconut oil (botanical name Cocos Nucifera Coconut Oil), and there is a purposeful reason for its popularity. Coconut oil helps to produce a bar of soap that has excellent cleaning properties. Most important to the soap maker is the desirable fluffy bubbly factor that coconut oil adds to finished soap.
Soap (real soap, not commercial soap) made with coconut oil contains numerous minerals and nutrients that are great for your skin. Such soap can help to remove dirt and dead cells from the skin and the nutrients are great for moisturizing your hair. The lactic and capric fatty acids in coconut oil may also have benefits for those with acne prone skin, and the antioxidants from the coconut oil may help to slow down the breakdown of elasticity in your skin, giving the appearance of firmer, smoother skin.
To summarize, coconut oil provides long and medium chain fatty acids to our products that may help your hair feel stronger, look shiny, and leave your skin feeling cleansed and fresh. But too much coconut oil can be drying, so we keep our coconut oil content at 30% or less in our soap recipes, and blend other oils and butters that feature other long chain fatty acid types that provide conditioning and moisturizing properties to balance it all out. Our goal is to create healthy, skin-loving soap and other products that you will love!
Giving back: The I AM GIRL Project
We want to introduce and promote “I AM GIRL”, a great initiative led by Fields of Life in Northern Ireland. The goal of I AM GIRL is to create and foster girl-friendly school environments and see 25,000 girls and young women in Uganda supported, nurtured and developed within the Fields of Life school network by 2020. We recently partnered to produce a new, beautiful custom soap called Aubergine Dream Swirl that will be ready for sale in mid-August, with all proceeds going to the I AM GIRL project, which provides these girls with the hygiene products they need to enable them to stay in school.
If you are in Northern Ireland and wish to support I AM GIRL, please watch our online store for pictures of this limited edition soap, and instructions on how you can order some for yourself. Over the next several months, we plan to make and sell custom soap specifically in support of I AM GIRL, and will be encouraging our customers to purchase a soap to help our girls in Uganda to continue their education.
Local Farmer’s Market
Farmer’s markets are very popular in many areas of Canada, and our area is no exception. We are especially proud to be a member of the South Common Farmer’s Market, located just off 19th Avenue and Parsons Road in Edmonton, Alberta. The Market is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Our August market dates are August 11th and 25th. Come on down, say hello and check out our booth!
Welcome!
A very special Farmhouse welcome to our new customers in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom! We are so happy to have you here with us!
We will be spending August making some new products in amazing Fall fragrances. You are going to LOVE them! But before I leave you, I want all of you to have the following coupon code for your store purchases for the month of August. Good for one free soap when you purchase two soaps (just enter the coupon code where indicated at the checkout page), and is provided to you exclusively as subscribers to Strawberry Creek Farmhouse Soaps! Your August code is: Augustsoaps