More Junkie Info

Well, I'm back from Fredericksburg and Kelle's house is gorgeous (and it's for sale, call her if you are interested!) and the talk of the day was Bath Junkie. Everyone in town was out shopping for soap fortune cookies...one woman even ordered up a custom batch for a wedding.

Kelle has asked me for more direction on my surgery techniques, so here goes. First I warm the cookie a little bit in my hands simply by cupping them around the cookie. If i can spy the paper insert of their fortune, I yank it out. If not, once the soap is warm, I take a small paring knife and make an incision right along the fold where the two lips of the cookie have been pressed together, this is something like gently opening an oyster. Then I pop out the old fortune and insert the new one.

Voila!

Here's My Fortune, Cookie: TheShopping Detective

Tomorrow I am invited for lunch at Kelle and Jim's new house in Fredericksburg, Texas. I haven't seen them in a while, am dying to see this just-built house and am very excited.
OK,OK, the real reason I am excited is that downtown Fredericksburg, as adorable as it is, has a Bath Junkie store.
If you do not know this brand, step this way and let me introduce you. Bath Junkie began in Arkansas and has shops dotted around the south and southwest. They sell soap and bathing essentials but are not at all like LUSH or any other store you know. They specialize in personalized scent and projects, you can have a party there, you can make your own soap or you can get them to help you with your fortune.
This is their new product that I am so excited about: glycerin soap fortune cookies. Clever, right? But wait, it gets better. The soaps come with a fortune inside them-- somewhat ho-hum but the beginning of genius.
I take the pre-printed fortunes out and insert my own. 'You will have a very happy birthday' is what I just wrote on one bit of pale blue paper and then stuck it back into the soap.
Then I found out you can get the store to put into the cookie whatever you want. Of course I'm waiting for a big diamond ring and a fortune that says 'will you...' but they do more normal requests as well. The cookies are larger than real fortune cookies so you can a fair amount of soap and a whole lot of novelty.
The soaps come ready made in about a dozen different colors and scents or you can custom make,or order, the scent you want. Chanel No.5 anyone?
Packaging becomes very important in this gift, so you can pick the soaps (one from column A, one from column B, tee hee) and then plunk them into a Chinese take-out food container supplied by Bath Junkie, add chopsticks and a gift card.
Since I will be spending much of the month of August in Asia, I am taking a suitcase filled with these babies to my friends and business associates all over Hong Kong, China and Bangkok. Of course, I understand that they don't really have fortune cookies in China, but I can explain it all. and I will.
For those who, like me, begin thinking about Christmas in July, it could be time to get serious. You get five soaps for $15. The web site does not allow you to order online but does direct you to a real person who can help you order.

I'm Baaaaack

So here I am, promising to pull it together. Off to Asia in mid-August and will certainly be blogging from there. Meanwhile I plan to supply a few Shopping Detective leads.

As for right now, well, it's simply true confessions time. I have long dreamed of the Austin Farmer's Market and made several attempts to get there. Austin is about 90 miles from where I live in Texas, so it's not that big a deal, but real life kept happening. Last time I was set to go, my father died. Sooooo, finally, I made it. Who cares if it's 104 degrees outside? Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor white eggplants...

If you happen to be in Austin on a Saturday and you want to head over to this market, ehy, be my guest. It's at 4th and Gaudalupe; there's free parking in the lot across the street. (For heaven's sake, don't pay that other lot $5!) If you trust me-- well-- stay home or travel to a city with a decent farmer's market. There was good music, the soap maker with Austin Mud soap was creative and offering up many Texas themed gift items and you might have enjoyed the poulet roti from the truck with the giant paper mache roast chicken on top ($10 per)...but, alas, the Health Department closed him down.

So all in all, and despite the current issue of Rachel Ray's Everyday magazine that raves about Austin as the most perfect city in the world, well, I'd stay in San Antonio. I hear they've jsut started up a new Farmer's market down at Pearl Brewery, so let's try that one.