I cannot believe that 2011 is over!  Personally, I think it was one of the fastest years in history.  We’re very excited about 2012 at GMS.  We’re hoping to move onto our new property at some point in 2012.  The children can’t wait to spend lots of time in our new woods and our new creek getting things ready for us and for the goats.  We’ve got 20 goats that are pregnant and due at the end of February.  This is the greatest number of pregnant goats we’ve ever had and we can’t wait for there to be baby goats everywhere!  We’re excited about all the new people that tried our soaps for the first time this holiday season and we’re ready to make lots and lots of soap to keep everyone moisturized and smelling good!

New Soaps

If you love it when we introduce new soap scents, you’re going to love this month!  We’re (re)introducing four new scents in January.  The first is our limited edition perfume counter.  Our hazelnut vanilla is also back as a seasonal soap.

The other goat milk soaps are red clover tea and pomegranate lemonade.  We are evaluating these two to see if either is popular enough to become a permanent Goat Milk Stuff soap.  For that to happen, they have to be a huge hit, so be sure to let us know if you try them and love them.  We don’t have stamps for these soaps yet, so the pomegranate lemonade will be stamped “lemon” and the red clover tea will be stamped “green tea”.  If they are wildly popular, we’ll be getting their stamps then!

Liquid Soap

Because so many people rely on our soap to help with their sensitive or cracking skin, we do everything we can to make sure our soap is as moisturizing and good for your skin as possible.  That’s why we don’t apply any heat to our bar soaps at any point throughout our soapmaking process.

Unlike bar soaps, making liquid soap requires cooking the soap paste before diluting it into a liquid.  Although we use lots of goat milk and cocoa butter to make it as moisturizing as possible, we still feel that our liquid soap is not as mild as our bar soap because of this added heat.

To help minimize that difference, we take one extra step and allow our liquid soap to cure for 6 months before we offer it for sale.  This additional curing time further improves the quality of our liquid soap

The unanticipated recent increase in demand for our liquid soap has depleted our inventory.  We’re working to replenish our supply and appreciate your patience while the soap cures.

If you are suffering from extremely dry skin or skin that is cracking, we would recommend that you use our purity bar soap until your skin is healed.

Soap Logs

Our newest soap mold just arrived.  It is a six log soap mold.  In the next couple of weeks, we will be starting to make soap logs in additional scents.  Right now, I have specific requests for tea tree and organic castile.  If you are ready to purchase a soap log in a specific scent, please email us and let us know!

The Oprah Magazine

We want to welcome all of our newsletter subscribers who first read about us in the Oprah magazine.  We’re glad you found us.  If you’ve been happy with our soaps and our customer service, we’d appreciate you letting the Oprah magazine folks know how much you enjoyed them writing about Goat Milk Stuff!

Samples

We had so many new customers this holiday season that we ran low on samples in many scents.  The children sent out some very small samples before they told us that they were low.  We’ve cut up some more, but if you got a super small one, we’re sorry!

Soap samples are small pieces of soap that are good for a few hand washings.  They are designed to give you an idea of what the scent smells like and how it feels on your skin.  If you’ve been a long time customer and know what the scents smell like you can pick your favorite or share them with others!

Because there are so many people with allergies, we do not add samples to orders unless you specifically request them.  To include them, first add something you want to buy to your shopping cart.  Below what you’ve added, on the right, you will see a drop down menu and an orange oval that says “add a sample” (see the photo below).  Just choose one sample at a time until you have 3 added to your cart.

We always do our best to make sure that you receive your order exactly as you requested.  We have one person pull, one person check, and one person box.  Despite this system, we still make mistakes and occasionally soap samples do not get added.  We apologize if this happens to you.  We do not send the samples out by themselves, but we will gladly include extra samples on your next order if you request them.

Credit Cards

We wanted to clarify how your payments are processed.  When you pay for your Goat Milk Stuff with a credit card, we never even see your credit card information.  We do not store it.  It is processed immediately and directly online in a secure environment.  The way to tell that you are in a secure environment (on any website, not just ours) is to look in the browser.  When you are in a secure environment, the web address will change from “http:” to “https:”.  You can see the change on our website after you press “checkout”.  You will not be in a secure environment until this point when the “https” appears.

So if you want to make an addition to your order, you need to call us with your credit card information, as we do not keep your card number on file.  We will then process your payment online in a secure environment.

Soap Lather

We’re often asked about how well our soap lathers, so we put together a video about it as well as a GMSU article about what affects soap lather.

Homestead Happenings

Christmas is a really special time around the Jonas house.  Greyden and Brett have birthdays in December, so we usually wait til after that to decorate the tree.  The children are completely in charge of the tree.  It’s fun to watch the younger children undo what the older children try to accomplish.  Jade and Indigo are always repositioning ornaments.

With so many people, present opening goes on for hours because I only allow one present to be opened at a time.  Usually each child gets his or her siblings a gift, but the older children are getting wiser and starting to combine their money to get larger presents.  This year, Jim got the whole family a special GMS present.

We love them!  They’re soft and warm and the children have been told they cannot wear them to clean the goat stalls!  Jim and I actually have zippered fleeces because they don’t make the sweatshirts in adult sizes (although I could wear Colter’s and he could wear mine)!

Newsletter Special

The January newsletter special is $5 off a limited edition or seasonal soapwith the code “new” (no quotes) and a $20 minimum purchase.  Make sure you add one of these eligible soaps to your shopping cart before entering the code.
Click here if you need help using the coupon code.

We thank you so much for all of your support of our family and our business.  We thrive on hearing from happy customers who enjoy everything we make!

The Jonas Family
Jim, PJ, Brett, Colter, Emery, Fletcher, Greyden, Hewitt, Indigo, and Jade