Shampoo bars are everywhere right now. Clean beauty brands love them. Sustainable living accounts swear by them. And if you’ve spent any time on natural haircare content online, you’ve probably seen someone holding up a little bar of soap and claiming it changed their hair forever. But is any of that actually true? Or is it just a trend dressed up in eco-friendly packaging? As someone who formulates and makes shampoo bars by hand — using plant-based oils, botanicals, and ingredients I’d put...

The Plan In December of 2019, I ordered five packages of bees from an apiary in Tennessee. The plan was simple. My grandfather — a beekeeper his entire life, the man who carried this tradition from Moldova across generations — was going to fly over and be with me when they arrived. He was going to show me how to install them into the hives. How to read the frames. How to find a queen. How to do everything I’d only read about in books and watched on YouTube videos at midnight. He was going to...

Last week I introduced you to the 9 natural clays we use in our handcrafted soaps. This week it's time for Part 2 — the botanical powders. If the clays are the mineral foundation of our soaps, the botanical powders are the superfoods. These are ingredients sourced from plants, algae, spices, and ancient Ayurvedic traditions — each one packed with compounds that do something specific and meaningful for your skin. Some of them you'll recognize. Others might surprise you. All of them were chosen...