Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 4

A little more of my background . . . . .

In 'Part 3' I gave you a bit of my educational background. Now I will tell you a little bit about my personality type. Yes, it all fits into how creating my Wonder Butter™ products comes to me so naturally. Not easily, not without lots of hard work, and not without a few mistakes along the way, but naturally.

There seems to be a distinct personality type in my family that crops up here and there. I am so glad I am blessed with the honor of being one of them! Here is as close of a description as I can get:

We adore science! All types of sciences fascinate us. Our lives center around things that involve the sciences. My dad was a great lab technician, well remembered for his good works even decades after he was gone. My oldest daughter has always been fascinated with anything science related, did so well in the high school sciences that she even made it to the National Science Fair, did well, and is now an excellent science teacher. My middle son has always been fascinated with the sciences of engineering, architecture and of course, most of all, nature! When he is not busy at work using his great skills and creativity to design an enormous, beautiful structure, he is out in the most natural areas of our Earth exploring Nature. Other family members have a strong love of science as well. Science was one of my absolute favorite subjects all through my school years and I have used it all throughout my adult life. My love of science was a huge help when I became a Certified Nurses Assistant. I used my love of, and science knowledge to begin my "handmade" business, and I use it in everyday life around the farm. All of us not only 'liked' science as a kid, but it became a part of our life, a part of who we are/were, in our adulthood.

We are highly creative people!  All of us with this distinct personality type are, creative to the point our minds never seem to stop working. Ideas constantly run through our heads, 24/7, making it almost impossible to sleep at times for wanting to be up creating the latest idea in our heads. Often times we have so many ideas all at once, that they seem to be tumbling around on each other up there in our heads. We live life excited about the next thing we want to create while we are still working on the one we have in our hands. It's great!

We are very compassionate, helpful, giving people. We want to help the world and all that is in it! This is such a strong characteristic in our personality type that we often forget to take good enough care of ourselves because we are so busy trying to help everyone and everything else. Be it the homeless, children in need, the elderly, the lonely, the hungry, the sick, the poor, animals in need, the Earth, you name it, in our mind, heart and soul . . . we actively want to make it all better!

We are humorous! We are upbeat, ornery, we love to laugh and we love to make people laugh. It is a huge part of our personality, and somehow, I think that mixes very well with all of the other above personality traits.

We are unique! We like to do things our own way, not follow along with the crowd, the everyday, the mundane. We don't follow society's dictates in the way things are done. We instead stand firm and do things the way we think things should be done. Some call that stubborn and bull headed, ha, ha. We consider ourselves 'unique' and 'strong minded' . . . . a quality we feel is a good thing to possess.

We are problem solvers!  We see a problem, especially a problem that affects not only our self, but many other people as well and immediately our brain goes to work, searching, thinking, pondering of a way that we might resolve that problem. We all adore solving problems that will result in helping other people have a better, more smooth, more comfortable every day life.

All of the above characteristics roll together to form a personality type that is strong within my family. I am very proud to be one of them! I strongly feel that these characteristics (strong love of the sciences, creativity, humor, uniqueness, compassion, and problem solving) give me the inner, natural tools I need to create such a great product as my Wonder Butter™ bath, body and beauty line. As I create each and every product in my Wonder Butter™ product line, I pour not only my skills, knowledge and experiences into my creations, but also my personality, which gives my Wonder Butter™ line a unique personality of its own that will stand out above the rest.

Thank you for stopping in and taking time to read. Stay tuned for Part 5 in this series, and if you haven't already, be sure and read Parts 1 - 3 of Wonder Butter™ beginnings!
Have a beautiful day!

Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 1
Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 2
Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 3

Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 3

Science . . . . . it has always been one of my favorite subjects. Good thing! In order to develop my dream skin cream for my aging skin, it was going to take a LOT of scientific study and research, which I was no stranger to.

I had taken several advanced science classes throughout jr. high, high school (college level), and on into college and loved every one of them. Those classes involved lots of lab time, as well as research time. I loved every minute of it! Then there were the science fair projects. I so looked forward to those! They involved countless hours of research, lab work, and often times interviewing and/or "testing" other humans to get results for my science projects. Then there was logging all of that information, analyzing it, then coming up with a conclusion. It was the best! As a teenager, I even enjoyed all that science work better than TV or talking on the phone. I just loved making discoveries and creating new things that would benefit me and other people.

Embarking on the possibility of creating a new skin cream that would meet my needs, and hopefully the needs of countless others, creating a product that might work equally as well (naturally) as the chemical laden products did, was like the biggest and best "science fair project" I had ever jumped into in my life! I was alive with excitement and eagerness! I was so glad to have all of that science experience behind me.  It was a huge help in knowing how and where to begin. 

As an added bonus in my new endeavor of scientific studies, it also all became some great new science material for my kids' home school studies. It was a win - win all the way around.

Thanks for dropping in and reading!

Be sure and also read:
Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 4
Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 2
Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 1

Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 2

"There must be a better way to improve my aging skin without all the harsh reactions and side effects of chemical laden skin creams and anti-wrinkle creams."
And so, the science loving me began the journey, to find a much more natural and gentle way to improve my aging skin . . .

As I said in a previous post, I had just divorced and became a single mom. Some of our children were grown and out on their own, one spent half of his time with each of us, but two of our children were "special needs" and required an enormous amount of care. "Dad" had washed his hands of our two special needs children, leaving their 24/7 care solely to me. We had adopted them together, both of us knowing they were extreme special needs, knowing that they had been classified as "unadoptable", yet here I was, single, and caring for them on my own. The public school system could not meet their needs, either, so in addition to their difficult care needs, I was also fully homeschooling them.

We did not have Internet then in our home. To use the Internet we had to make the long trip in to the nearest big town (approximately 30 miles round trip) to use the Library's Internet. But I needed the Internet and access to the countless books, references, etc. for my skin cream research, and my two young ones needed same for their home schooling. The public library then became my office/research center and my children's home school.



Getting to the public library at least two or three days a week wasn't as simple as it may sound.  We did have a small farm, farm chores had to be done before we could leave for the day, and, as anyone that has ever raised extreme special needs children knows . . . . .  'things' happen, 'things' come up, the 'unexpected' is to always be 'expected'. Getting up, sticking to schedule, then getting from point A to Point B isn't always the simple task that most would think it would be. Sometimes, getting from Point A (home) to Point B (the library) seemed like the total impossibility that might never happen. But I was determined! I knew that if I could come up with a natural skin cream that would improve my skin without all the harsh side effects of many of the commercial concoctions, that not only "I" would be happy, but countless people all over the World might be happy as well! So I pushed through all the difficulties, made it to that library several days a week, and began my intense research and studies ... right alongside my two youngest children with their home school studies.

Thanks for stopping in.  Stay tuned for Part 3!

Be sure and also read Wonder Butter™ Beginnings Part 1
.

Wonder Butter™ Beginnings - Part 1

The construction of our new Bath and Body kitchen is coming along nicely. In projects like this, though, something always comes along to slow things down, but we are still progressing and I can hardly wait for it to be finished! I look forward to getting all of my great Wonder Butter™products back on the shelves and in our online stores.

While we are constructing our new kitchen, I am going to take the opportunity to tell the story of the beginning of  Wonder Butter™ . . . . .  why I created this wonderful, natural skin loving butter and how Wonder Butter™ grew into an entire, very large, product line. Here we go . . . . .



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was early in the year of 2003. After more than 20 years of marriage, I had just gone through a very long, extremely emotional, super high stress, exhausting beyond words divorce. The emotional strain, extreme lack of sleep, and off the charts stress took a huge tole on my skin. People tend to forget that our skin is our largest organ and all of these factors have a huge effect on it. We really should be much kinder to our skin throughout all of our life, not wait until we start seeing the tell tale signs.

I began noticing that small lines were starting to form at the outer corners of my eyes, across my cheeks, forehead, and here and there all around my face. I also noticed that my skin on my face had become very course and rough. This horrified me! I was barely 40, starting life over as a single mom, and I suddenly felt like I looked like an old lady!  So what did I do?

The next time I was in town running errands, I purchased my first jar of . . . . anti-wrinkle cream! I could hardly wait to get home with that new little jar of  "magic". Once home, I sat right down with my new skin cream that I had high hopes for, carefully read the instructions, eagerly opened the jar and applied it all over my face, exactly as the instructions stated. I was excited and had such high expectations for that little jar of skin cream.



In just a matter of minutes my face began to feel strange . . . . . . then my face began to burn . . . . the burning grew and grew . . . . . then hard pain set into my face. I ran to look in the mirror and my face was so red and swollen it looked like it would begin bleeding at any moment! Did I apply it incorrectly? What did I do wrong?

I read everything on the jar again, over and over and over ..... no, I had done everything correctly. Over the next week, I tried that anti-wrinkle cream a couple of more times, each time getting the same, horrific results, except that it was worse each and every time. I started to research to see what the problem might be. Everything I came up with seemed to suggest that the reaction I was getting was fairly common among anti-wrinkle creams. COMMON?!?!?!? No way! That just couldn't be right. Turned out, as I understood from my research, that many of the commercial anti-wrinkle creams on the market work by sloughing off, burning off, etc, the old, the damaged and the dead skin cells on your skin/face to get down to the fresh, new skin underneath. Oh, my . . . . there just had to be a better way. And so, my journey to find that better way began.

Stay tuned for "Part 2" of Wonder Butter™ Beginnings 

Thanks for stopping in!

Kitchen Update and our Newest Wonder Butter™ Product

Hello, Everybody! We do hope that life has been treating you well! I wanted to make sure I took a moment to check in and give a bit of an update on our progress here.

Work is continuing on the new bath and body kitchen we are building to improve production and efficiency for making our great Wonder Butter™ products. Progress was slowed way down when the scorching heat hit and dragged on for so long, but the temperatures have finally dropped a bit and we are back on it hard and heavy. It is still really hot, but not nearly so bad. I can hardly wait to get the kitchen finished! It will make it so much easier to get ALL of my Wonder Butter™ products back into production and back out there for you.

Through all of the moving we continued to make a few of our Wonder Butter™ products on request by our regular customers, but it just wasn't possible to keep every product in our Wonder Butter™ line made up. As some of you know, we have over 20 products, now in our Wonder Butter™ line! I can hardly wait to get them all back into production. Me, personally, I have especially been missing my Lotion Bars.

No matter how busy I seem to get, though, the creativity in me just never stops. I am 54 and really beginning to feel the effects of aging starting on my skin. From being outside most of the day around the farm, my face, arms, hands..... everything exposed, has really started feeling weathered. All of this inspired me to create yet another member of our Wonder Butter™ family.

All of our Wonder Butter™ products are fantastic! But I decided it was time to make one specifically for my weathered skin... one that was light enough that I could apply it several times a day if I wanted to, yet would also work great if you only applied it once a day if you were going to be indoors all day.  After countless hours, days, weeks of yet more research and development, I finally came up with my newest formula for the latest member of our Wonder Butter™ product line. We are now in the testing stages and will update and let you know how it is going and when it will be ready for sale. So far.... we are both absolutely loving it! My poison ivy covered body has been especially finding it soothing.

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Day! ! ! !

BRAND vs PRODUCT

I need to take a moment to explain the difference between the name of my product line and the name of each, individual product, to clear up a little confusion some people have had.

Wonder Butter™ is my BRAND name. Wonder Butter™ is the name given to my entire line of products. Within my Wonder Butter™ brand name are many product names/types such as, Original Skin Cream, Wonder Butter "Extra", Wonder Butter "Blue", Wonder
Butter "Vapor", Lip Butter, Lip Balm, Lotion Candle, Lotion Bar, a variety of soaps, and the list goes on, along with new products that are always in the works. 

As with  many other brands, one starts out with one product and grows from there. Often times that first product is what people instantly think of when they hear mention of your brand name, thus considering the brand name, the product name. Each person develops their favorite product with that product line and often times, when they hear the brand name, their favorite product comes to mind, associating only that product with the brand name and forgetting there are other products in the line. This is a common occurrence. One great example would be Clorox. Clorox is a brand name with many products under that brand name. Yet when most people hear the word Clorox, they instantly think of bleach. But bleach is simply one of a host of fantastic products carried under the brand name of Clorox.

So once again, Wonder Butter™ is my BRAND name, with a large array of natural products listed under my Wonder Butter™ brand name, most of which are Bath & Beauty products. I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Wonder Butter™ Qualifications

   As many of my regular customers can tell you, I make an array of products from soaps, to lotions, to candles, to knits, and so much more. So what qualifies one of my products to make it into my Wonder Butter™ line, you might ask?

   All of my Wonder Butter™ products have one common denominator, Unrefined Shea Butter. Shea Butter, in its UNREFINED state, is said to contain a multitude of healing properties and antioxidants. I have been so impressed by this natural substance that I decided that I had to include it in all of my Wonder Butter™ products. It is said that when Shea Butter has been  processed and refined, it loses much of it's beneficial properties, while often absorbing and holding traces of the chemicals used in its refining process. Just the thought of the possibility makes me want to run from the processed version.  Only all Natural,  Unrefined Shea Butter will be found in my Wonder Butter™ products.

Of course, other top quality, natural ingredients are also included in my Wonder Butter™ formulas. Most of my formulas also include Extra Virgin Cold Pressed Olive Oil, which is wonderful on skin. The majority of my Wonder Butter™ products are 100% natural.  On a rare occasion I might make one that is approximately only 90% natural, but it will be well marked and will still live up the the quality of the Wonder Butter™ name.  The only thing that might occasionally be added that would break from my 100% natural formulas would be flavoring, fragrance or color. Occasionally a customer may request fragrances, flavors, or even coloring, that are not completely natural. Then if that requested product catches on or generates enough interest, I will leave it in my line to keep all of my customers happy. But the base of my formulas will always be COMPLETELY natural, because we feel that all Natural makes our skin the happiest!

If you see the Wonder Butter™ label on any of my products, you can be certain that you will find natural unrefined Shea Butter in the ingredient list.
Thanks for reading and may you have a healthy, happy day!