Fresh Bet Bits, Claire Burke Original Memories, Home Fragrance Product Updates and Commentary

Mother’s Day is May 13th this year. My mom passed away 4 years ago on April 11, 2003 and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t still miss her dearly. Don’t let this holiday pass without honoring your mother with a lovely gift to thank her for all she has done.

I have just added a few special items to a new page called Mother’s Day Gift Suggestions. Remember we have many lovely gift baskets that can be custom made per your specifications. There are several pretty gift wraps available and if you say you read about it here, the gift wrap will be FREE!

Our new Greenleaf Aroma Decor Diffusers are perfect for Mom’s kitchen. Be sure to include several bottles of diffuser oil so she can decide which scent she likes best. We also have many beautiful reed diffusers, candles and bath & body treats that Mom would be delighted to enjoy!

Click here for Mother’s Day Gift Suggestions!

Greenleaf is headquartered not far from us in Spartanburg, SC. It’s always like talking to a neighbor when we visit their showroom in Atlanta. This past January at the Gift Show, I was delighted to see their gorgeous new Aroma Decor Diffusers.

For Spring, they have released 4 stunning new diffusers and 3 great new scents. We are starting out with sachets, diffuser oils and some bath & body in: Orange & Honey, Raspberry Lemonade and Ginger Tea.

New diffusers: Lemon Bowl (featured on HGTV), Birdhouse, Aqua & Ivory and Blue & White. The blue & white version reminds me of my favorite Dutch Delft pattern. Wade & I had the chance to visit the town of Delft in Holland back in the late 80’s and I just LOVE this traditional blue and white pattern.

The Lemon Bowl diffuser is fabulous if you like fruit motif decor in the kitchen…which I do! (I have fruit decorated plates from Germany and ceramic fruit tiles in my kitchen…very traditional.) The birdhouse diffuser is wicked cute and the new Aqua & Ivory is square with rounded corners and floral textures - very feminine.

When Greenleaf sent me sachet samples in January of their 3 new scents, my husband fell in love with the Ginger Tea. He likes oriental scents. I really liked the new Raspberry Lemonade; and the Orange & Honey is incredibly fragrant. The Orange & Honey sachet lasted forever in my master bath..it has great staying power. All of these new scents are available in diffuser oils for your Aroma Decor lamp or Lampourri/Lampeberger.

The other day a customer called to say she’d had some problems with her Aroma Decor diffuser wick not burning properly. She had contacted the Factory and they suggested using Purifier oil in between scents to clean out the stone. So, we have ordered Purifier oil for this very purpose and it should be available in the next few weeks.

As always, let us know if you have any special requests and we’ll do our best to add these items to our offering. Click here to see what’s new from Greenleaf.

Almost a year ago, Amazon approached me about starting a new website through their IWS program. At the time I thought “what would I need another website for?”. However, I gave it some thought and decided it was a good idea. I felt fortunate to find a great new domain name: HomeAndBathScents.com.

Well we waited month after month for Amazon to get their new program running. I finally ran out of patience and decided we would build the site ourselves. After all, I had done it once, so we could do it again! First I thought we’d try a new program and then I realized this was like re-inventing the wheel. So after discussing the new site with Cliff, our webmaster, we decided to work with he and Tamara on the new project.

Cliff and Tamara are wonderful resources for us in our little town of Central. They are actually located in Atlanta and they were already familiar with our present website. They started in October and by December they had most of the hard stuff done. During the winter we are so busy with new products and orders that I had to put this project on the back burner. In February, we were ready to start fine-tuning the new site. After several months of tweaking and cleaning data, I am pleased to announce that our new site was launched last week.

Home And Bath Scents is designed for a younger clientele. The Fresh Bet site is a bit more elegant and mature. Jenn was very instrumental in our new site and I really relied upon her younger eyes to give the new site a fun young feel. She accomplished this with a cute clawfoot tub, butterflies and bubbles. Just too fun!

This site is designed to specialize in home and bath fragrances, thus we have intentionally omitted all TC Business Hygiene products. We are also pleased to offer Google Checkout on our new site as an added benefit.

When you get a few minutes, be sure to checkout our new site: Home And Bath Scents.com.

This year Leia is having lots of fun keeping our 2 display windows decorated as the holidays and seasons change. Because this is a new treat for us; I wanted to be sure to share the pictures with our customers. Wilma in Montana said she loves looking at the pictures of our store.

Yesterday Leia removed the Easter bunnies from the window as we start getting ready for Mother’s Day. Luckily I had snapped a few pictures last week because the Easter decorations were just precious!

We are also pleased to note that we have promoted Leia to Store Manager! Sadly, Jenn has returned to school and Kate has moved to Florida. We now have 2 new Fresh Bet ladies: Amy and Pam. We appreciate your patience as Amy and Pam get up to speed with learning our vast array of products.

We were delighted to hear that the Claire Burke factory has decided to bring back ‘The Sea”. This past January, at the Gift Show, we had the change to see the entire new collection in pastel blue and it is simply beautiful.

The Sea is now available for pre-order on our websites and we expect it to arrive by late April. There will be a new 4-wick glass luxury candle, simmering oil, plug-in warmer & refills, potpourri, vapourri, tealights, votives, reed diffuser, tin candle and refresher oil spray.

The Factory is right on time with this classic ocean scent as the trend for 2007 promises lots of water fragrances increasing in popularity.

The Sea reed diffuser is perfect for the guest bath as are the potpourri and plug-in warmer. Click here for Claire Burke’s The Sea.