Recycling Program at Marmalade Hills

The only thing separating a habit from a lifestyle is a little practice. Every time I do my dishes I wash every plastic container before I put it into recycling bin. It probably takes me a bit longer to do my dishes than if I would just threw everything into the garbage can. For me just one thought of burying all that plastic into the ground makes me nauseous. Washing containers and recycling is a simple routine that may seem time consuming and hard. But after some time it turns into a lifestyle. At some point you start doing it on autopilot. Every time I put out my garbage on a curb I get terrified by how much plastic we have accumulated over one week. And we are just a small family of four people! I can skip one garbage collection but I can never skip recycling pick-up, my recycling bins are always full. So there is no turning back for me – it will always take me to do my dishes a bit longer. And don’t even get me started on how much newspapers and magazines get thrown away without ever opening them. Good thing we have paper recycling container at our school. I always have at least three full paper bags each month!
After another garbage day and two more full recycling bins I though that it would be a good idea to offer 10% discount¹ for each returned Marmalade Hills’ container and/or jar². This way Marmalade Hills will contribute to keeping our Planet clean and also save you some green! This is how it will work: when you run out of your favorite lotion, body wash, body mist, facial mask, toner, body oil or scrub rinse the container, pop it in an envelope and send it back to us. We will mail/email you 10% off coupon for anything in our store! Accumulate more than one container and get larger discount! Our containers are light and compact they will perfectly fit in a large envelope and will be cheap to ship. Or bring your clean empty bottles and jars to one of our upcoming shows and get your green credit right on the spot!

Shop responsibly and be the change you wish to see in the world!

We thank you in advance for your effort!

Truly yours,
Liana.

¹ This discount can not be combined with any other offers.

² We will not reuse old containers for new products, but we will make sure that they will get recycled and not end up on a landfill.

Phew!

If running your own business and having two kids weren’t enough, we also decided to have some remodeling done to our house.  After two years Marmalade Hills studio has moved out of our family room into a much larger space!  That is what we have been doing last two weeks: we have moved and reorganized my studio and office.  I can finally have my work room in the same room with ingredients and supplies and now my packaging station is next to stock shelves. I hope to save a lot of time by eliminating frequent trips between separate spaces. I think moving Marmalade Hills out of the house will help me to run whole operation more efficiently.  Now I can just leave the house and concentrate on getting things done: making new products, experimenting with new recipes, taking more pictures – all without interruptions by my kids.  I wake up every morning and can’t wait to go to my studio and create! 

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Reborn and awaken...

Finally my first post, yippee! I’m very excited and don’t even know where to start… Recently I have been awaken and reborn after almost five years of hibernation. Last five years of my life I have been concentrating on being pregnant, raising my wonderful kids, being a good wife and the usual - making the ends meet by working full time side-by-side with my DH in automotive industry. Somewhere in the middle of it all I have discovered a fascinating hobby that would take me away from my everyday routine and get me super excited and energized. It didn’t take long to realize how much potential my favorite hobby had. Effects of my natural soaps and skin care products just blew me away. My skin never felt this good before! I kept smacking my head in amazement: “Natural ingredients, how simple it can be and what a great result!” Ever since, I have been madly in love with natural and nature derived ingredients.

After working on my lotions and potions for a year and some, from a studio in our family room, I have decided to take my hobby to a next level. I wanted everybody to try my products, I wanted everybody to feel the difference! And that’s how Marmalade Hills LLC was born. After getting my head out of my hibernation hole I have been looking around the Internet and I have noticed a new interesting creature - Blog. When I discovered that many companies and craft people keep blogs in order to connect with their customers, to bring them news on every day basis I started to wonder if I should start one of my own. I’ve read many other people’s blogs, I’ve read a lot about running your own blog and finally I’m here.

I’m planning on using this blog mainly for showcasing my products and talking about the process involved in making them. Everything, from why I picked a particular ingredient for my lip balm to why I have designed my label the way you see it. Also I would like to talk about challenges in running your own business, your home, raising kids and being a caring wife at the same time. I hope not to bore you to death and thank you for reading this far!

Liana at Marmalade Hills.

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