FIRST ANNIVERSARY!

Going back over a few old blog posts to find links, I was shocked to see that I started this blog on May 16 of last year, so today is its one-year anniversary! My perfume business is not far behind, having started in late July of last year. I’m happy with the way both are developing. I really appreciate all of the readers of the blog and my wonderful perfume customers.

Right now I’m thinking about how to celebrate the first-year anniversary of both enterprises, and am asking for your suggestions. Some ideas that I’m mulling over are:

- Sending a thank-you gift to everyone who has signed up as a follower during the first year. It would have to be small since, happily, there are quite a few of you. It would probably be just some sort of perfume sample, but it would be a token of my appreciation.

- Providing a special coupon code that can be used on my website for a discount or a freebie of some sort.

- Making a special perfume to celebrate the first anniversary of Olympic Orchids Artisan Perfumes, based on feedback from you. What would you like to see added to the lineup besides the ones that are currently under development (Alyssum and the Mystery Perfume aka DevilScent)?

- Having one or more significant perfume giveaways by random drawing, answering trivia questions, writing a short essay about a topic, or some other feat of intellectual skill.

- Making a series of perfumes that incorporate the items from the traditional anniversary gift lists that I see from time to time. I have no idea whether anyone actually uses these lists for any purpose, but for whatever they’re worth, they’re out there. The first year is “paper”, so that would be the theme of this year’s perfume. I think this approach has some interesting possibilities given that the first 6 years are: paper, cloth, leather, flowers, wood, and candy. I may do this anyway, since the idea set me to thinking about how to use the theme “paper” in a perfume. “Papyrus” has been overdone, at least in theory. I say "in theory" because, even though it’s in the lists of notes for many perfumes, I still don’t have any idea what it actually smells like. As far as I know, papyrus plants just smell sort of green and grassy. No one really wants to smell like paper or cardboard. The scent of a paper mill is definitely out, too. The first idea that came to mind was a perfume called “Tabloid”, “Tabloid Freak”, or “Tabloid Sensation”, which would represent something outrageous like the boy who is half human and half bat, an alien abduction, or a really nasty celebrity divorce that allegedly involved a lot of perfume bottle breakage. There would also be some sort of paper or newsprint note permeating the whole thing.

I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to share my commemoration of this one-year milestone, but these seem like some of the more obvious approaches. What do you think?

By the way, this post reminds me that the two winners of the labdanum drawing, Laurie Brown and Diana, have never claimed their samples. Maybe I'm not going about announcing winners in the right way. All you need to do is e-mail me with your shipping information. To send an e-mail, just go to "Profile" and under "Contact Information" click on the "e-mail" line.

[Cake photo adapted from Wikimedia]