Special Feature Friday: Simple is Pretty Shop

Edition 26

Simple is Pretty Shop is a shop that specializes in wool drying balls, lavender sachets and wedding favors. Sandra is a stay at home mom, who always wanted to run her own business. She found it difficult to buy the proper laundry detergents for her son sensitive skin, and as a result Sandra began experimenting laundry solutions. Her goal was to reduce the harsh chemicals in laundry detergent and dryer sheets. Through time and experiments Sandra came up with homemade recipes that work! 

I did not learn about dryer balls until last year, so I will give a quick explanation on them. Dryer balls are made out of 100% wool, they are used in the drying machine to help your laundry dry faster. This reduces the time you need to dry the clothes. It is both good for your electric bill and the environment. Dryer balls can replace laundry sheets and fabric softener, they do not contain chemicals so they are great for people with a sensitive skin. The dryer balls can be used many times. In addition they can also make for great pet toys, if you don't mind to replace them sooner. The dryer balls can be made scented or unscented, the scent lasts a couple of weeks but you can add some essential oil to them to make them smell wonderful again. 

Next to laundry balls you can also find a great selection of lavender sachets in Simple is Pretty Shop. These can be put in drawers and closets, to really insure your clothes smell wonderful without chemicals! Sandra also sells little sachets that can be given away as wedding favors. These sachets with organic lavender will last a long time, and will make sure your guests will think about your wedding for a long time to come! It is also possible to have the lavender in a ring bearers pillow, all for your great day! 

Sandra has been very sweet to give a discount code of 15% of the readers of the blog: SPRING2014
The code is valid until the 15th of May 2014.

Sandra also has a facebook page and a blog with great tips!

It has been a while

At the end of January I started to feel a little overwhelmed with everything going on in my life.
There are 3 things that need a lot of time and attention: learning French, looking for a job and the Etsy shop. At a certain point I felt like I could not do any of them properly.

It took a little time, but I decided I would have to put one of these on hold. Naturally that had to become the Etsy shop, as the other 2 where way to important to put on hold, and also, finding a job would solve any problem immediately.

So, in February I did nothing for she shop, it gave me a lot of time to focus on the other 2 things, and even though I did not yet find a job, I do feel I am close to doing so. Also the French language has really progressed, I took a test last Monday at school and I can go to the next stage.

By ignoring the shop, I also had to put blogger aside, and therefore there have not been any posts in February. Now it is March, and I have decided to spend some more time on the shop again.
Still not as much as before, but I can take some hours a week to make new items and promote my shop and other shops.

Before I go, I would like to show this little elephant. It is a hand-carved Bali bead, made of bone.
He sits on a ketylo hair stick and I think he is absolutely adorable. There is also a version available with a rabbit and a frog!

Vallon des Trésors

Work in progress

When I am working on a project I do not like to clean up the items I need for crafting until it is finished.

This means that sometimes we have go go to bed with the house being a mess, and get up with a house being a mess. Since I have started working on the shop this has become an explosive problem.

Explosive because that is what the room looks like, as if a little bomb of crafting items just went off.

Usually you can find me somewhere in the middle of it, with a cold cup of tea and an old sandwich I forgot about. In my old house this was not much of a problem because I had a room for sewing.

In this house it is quite a problem because it is small, there is not much place to put things away, and of course I am not living here on my own but with Dear BoyFriend, who I will be calling DBF from now on.

I can't quite believe how patient DBF is with me, putting up with all my stuff day in and out, sometimes he decides we need to clean up, and then we do. but about 3 hours later it is back to being a mess. I think he is sweet for helping me clean up my crap in the first place.

So, something needs to change, I should start working on one project and then finish it, and not -as I am doing now- 5 projects at the same time. Or maybe I have to stick with two, because in the evening I work on different projects since I do not like to sew in the evening. Oh dear, there you go, as soon as I find a resolution I decide something to make that resolution useless in the first place.

So I should definitively work on getting my stuff organised better, after all this is a tiny house and we will be here for another 3 years. I will dream of having a sewing room for myself one day, but for now I am happy with what we have!