Two Big Announcements: Shop Online + Two New Blends

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I’m thrilled to announce not one, but two milestones: you can now order directly from our website, and we have two brand-new products, Drift Off to Sleep Lavender Blend and Migraine Away Rosemary Blend.

Shop online, finally
Not being able to buy online has been a long-time sore spot for many of you, and I totally get it. I finally got off my duff and set up an online store. The big hurdle was always shipping: how do I charge fairly when customers are spread across the whole country? With some help from an AI assistant, I worked through Canada Post’s rates and built a system that charges you based on where you live and what you order. Checkout is handled securely through Stripe, and we accept all major credit cards.

Something new, at last
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that for 23 years I’ve been riding my mom’s coattails, selling only the blends she created while promising, “I’ll make some new ones soon.” I finally did.

I wanted to focus on two of the most common complaints out there: headaches and restless nights. My mom built up a wonderful reference library over the years, so I spent many hours poring over her books. I chose the oils I wanted to work with, and then it was test tubes and a whole lot of drops.

The response from our testers has been wonderful. People love the scents, and the feedback has been really encouraging.

Give them a try
Both blends are available now in our online shop. I’d love to hear what you think, so drop me a line once you’ve tried them!

Store locator map is finally live!

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Greetings,

So last year my 3rd party map app decided to significantly raise their rates. I wasn’t (still aren’t) doing any marketing = low website traffic = I could no longer justify the cost. I figured that coding my own map locator couldn’t be that difficult right? I’d just do a little research, watch some YouTube vids and yeah, get down to it. Wrong! I struggled for several weeks with Google Cloud Shell following examples exactly (or so I thought) but getting no-where before I finally gave up. Towards the end of last year I started to think maybe AI could help. After all there has been non-stop chatter about it replacing people who write code. I started with Microsoft’s Copilot and while I did make some headway, it was frustrating and it never was able to complete the task. After searching for which AI was best for coding I tried Anthropic’s Claude. Now to be fair, Claude had the benefit of lessons I had learned from dealing with Copilot but still… in about 20-minutes it built what at least 20-hours of working with Copilot could not. I’ve got more tweaks to work on but for now I’ve got a map you can use to find a store (hopefully) close to you.

Thanks for checking us out,
Michael