Saturday, July 31, 2010

Live at last!

Woohoo!!! Yippee!! Yabba dabber! We’re live!!!!!!! 

Carol’s ‘little happy dance’ is certainly well deserved!! As is the immense gratitude and appreciation I have for her incredible intuitive and artistic abilities. Dealing with every teeny, tiny detail of building a website (and hours and hours of discussions with each of us to reach agreement on every teeny, tiny detail), Carol has managed to create lovely imagery to match a dream of 25 years. What a talent! I haven’t stopped dancing yet!!

I have to admit it’s still sinking in. Once the work was done, the site was up, I was a bit stunned and a lot awed and spent what little free time I’ve had this past week staring at the individual pages and exploring every button and link. All I can say is I absolutely positively love it. Finally!!...the opportunity to make skinfood available to everyone has arrived and this, beyond anything else, makes me happy beyond measure.

Coinciding with the launching of our website, this week has also brought a plethora of opportunities for sharing skinfood. My son-in-law had emergency surgery Monday night and I’ll be making sure he has plenty of skinfood on hand for healing his rather large incision. And our newest family member, an overly rambunctious kitten, received more than he bargained for when he pulled a bowl of hot noodles on top of his tiny body Tuesday. His little paw was pitiful…again, skinfood to the rescue. You’d never know he’d been traumatized now.

True to the nature of skinfood, since its first introduction to friends and family those many years ago, the past week has given us new devotees through word of mouth about skinfood’s amazing healing abilities. Several times one person or another has taken the time to stop me in my rush to and fro at work to rave about what it’s done for them… and to request more for themselves and their loved ones. I love it!

A few days ago two charter-boat fishermen stopped me on the dock of the little marina I work for during the summer. “Look at my finger! I got a fishing line cut and skinfood healed it in two days!” one said with obvious excitement. It was true; I could barely see where the line had laterally sliced a bit of his finger. I didn’t hear all the details of the other fisherman’s story because he was describing his incident at the same time as the first. But the look on his face told me everything – skinfood worked better than he’d imagined possible on a painful bite a Spanish mackerel landed on his hand. Ye-ouch!

One of them also said he’d given it to a customer’s son to try on a jellyfish sting and was told it took the sting away immediately. “That’s what he said, but I’m gonna try it for myself and let you know,” he assured me. Apparently jellyfish stings are pretty common for coastal fishermen. I’ll let you know his ‘professional’ verdict soon. Who knew fishermen lived so dangerously?

And then there was the restaurant manager that ‘borrowed’ a friend’s skinfood to use on his new tattoo. He had to give hers back for the new baby she’d just delivered and wanted to make sure I could get more to him for the next tattoo he was getting in a few days…gotta get on this today!

Word-of-mouth is definitely the way skinfood has moved from person to person over the years. I’ve seen firsthand how people love to talk about something that works for them…and then pass it on to loved ones. This continues to be the most heart-warming affirmation for me; I love hearing people’s stories and seeing their amazement when tell how well skinfood worked for them. It’s so wonderful to know it truly helps people.

And in that vein I can’t quit blabbering before thanking so many of you…those who have used skinfood for many years with utter devotion (and incredible determination to keep up with me in order to get it when you need it). What wonderful people I have met because of skinfood. And what wonderful support all of you have given me and the product. Thank you so very, very much. Hopefully our website will make it easier for you to re-supply as needed – and to pass skinfood on to others.

And of course, much, much love to the skinfood ladies, Carol and Rena (you rock!), and my family who continues to always give their incredible support. Thank you so much.

… could’ve never gotten here from there without every single one of you.

Please post any and all of your comments…they are each one very important to all of us…. Peggy

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

It's official ... you can now get your frog on!


The Original Skinfood is really and truly, at long last, online.

I'm not sure I've even fully grasped the reality of that statement. It feels almost strange think it, much less say it out loud. I'm simultaneously thrilled and at a loss ... although one would think I would be doing a serious happy dance considering the effort that has gone into getting here.

Oh yeah, y'all can't bet your sweet baby booties, this ol' gal did a happy dance.

On the flip side, I've been working so hard, have been so focused on this step in our process of re-launching the business, knowing having the website online was a key element to that end, that I have thought of nothing else for the past couple of months. Daylight 'til waaaay past dark, my world has been website, website, website and more website. The closer it came to the end of the month the more anxious I got. July deadline. I was going to meet that deadline if it killed me. I did remember to feed the cats, I did remember to take a shower every day, and most of the time I remembered I do have to eat. The rest of my brain cells spit out most everything and yelled, "Must_build_website!"

I must confess, the artist in me loathes the word 'deadline' but the business part of me hates not meeting a deadline nearly as much. I spent too many years working in the graphics industry to not be completely wigged out at the thought of not meeting a deadline - even a self-imposed one.

So now it's done.

This is where the expression "at a loss as to what to do with myself" came in rather appropriately. Suddenly, with the click of a button, I'm no longer pulling my hair out focused on building the website and have hours to fill. Ugh! Had a serious moment of panic when I realized I didn't know what else to do with the rest of my day. Felt kind of stupid to be feeling sad that I could actually go sit on the sofa and relax instead of sitting at the computer and arguing with gif files and html codes that didn't want to play nice ... probably should have felt far more stupid to be getting into verbal altercations with html codes.

I should have had a little party.

Instead, I ended up gathering my bucket of cleaning supplies and scrubbing the shower.

I hope you will all go visit our brand new website and of course, buy skinfood! 

Namaste, y'all ...
Carol