AN UNINTENTIONAL EXPERIMENT AND A NEW DRAWING

For the past few months I have been posting on Facebook whenever there was a winner of one of the drawings, and the winner usually responds right away. This last time I got busy with a lot of things and didn’t put anything on Facebook. The winnings are unclaimed, and there were far fewer comments than usual on the post for the new drawing. It seems that a lot of people don’t see the blog unless I put an alert on Facebook. I’ll do it this time and will try to remember to do so in future. 

This week’s winner is TRINITI

Last drawing’s winner was PARROT. Parrot has one week to contact me, otherwise everything will go to Triniti as a jackpot. 

To claim your winnings send an e-mail to olympicorchids at gmail dot com or leave a message on the Olympic Orchids  Facebook page. I will need your complete shipping address. 

This week’s photo is Phalaenopsis bellina, which is blooming right now. The fragrance is amazing, kind of a citrusy floral, but unique. It diffuses its fragrance all day. 

To enter this week’s drawing for a big box of samples, just leave a comment about how your summer is going, or any other random thoughts that you have. 

[Photo is mine]

SKUNK WORKS DRAWING WINNERS

I meant to publish the results of the drawing yesterday, but was distracted by the morning's ferry trip to pick up baby orchid flasks, followed by the power company's subcontractors coming to mutilate our trees, and then working on the new, improved Olympic Orchids Perfume Boutique website, which is coming along nicely, but slowly because of all the products that have to be entered in multiple variations.

The winners of last weeks drawing for a Tigerlily tote bag filled with samples and other goodies are:

TARENA

RAJESH BALAKRISHNAN

If you are a winner, please contact me with your complete shipping address at olympicorchids at gmail dot com or send a PM on our Facebook page. You must claim your prize by Wednesday, July 5 or it will be added back into the jackpot.

[Photo is mine, taken from our local beach at the Edmonds ferry terminal three nights ago]

WINNERS OF THE SONNET XVII DRAWING

The scraps of paper have been mixed up thoroughly and two of them were drawn.

The grand prize winner of the 30 ml bottle of Sonnet XVII is YUKI.

The runner-up, who will receive a sample set of Peace-Love-Perfume is PEPPY OBRIEN.

To claim your winnings, please e-mail me at olympicorchids at gmail dot com.

[Roulette wheel photo from Wikimedia]

WINNER OF THE LIL DRAWING

I know I said I would post the results of the drawing on Friday, but my fall teaching started this past week and I didn’t have time to do much of anything except “day job” work. This weekend I have a little respite, so the paper scraps have been thoroughly mixed and shaken up, and one grand prize winner has been drawn.

The winner of the full bottle of LIL is NAOMI SCOTT

The runners-up, who win samples of their choice are:

LINDA BERLIN

FARBOD Gh

To claim your winnings, all you need to do is send me a PM with your full shipping info. You can e-mail me at olympicorchids at gmail dot com, or leave a PM on Facebook.

Everyone who has entered the last tow drawings in automatically entered in the quarter million pageviews grand prize drawing. If you have not yet entered, there will be a post with an opportunity to enter that one.

[photo of Pandanus odoratissimus, aka kewda, is from Wikimedia. Kewda is one of the notes n Lil.] 

WINNERS OF MYSTERY GIVEAWAY

The winners of the mystery giveaway are:

YUKI and LAURIE BROWN

Please contact azarsmith7atgmaildotcom to claim your prizes. Believe me, they’re worth it!

Stay tuned for more giveaways in August!

[Gratuitous photo shows the neighborhood near where I was staying in San Francisco] 

SAMPLE DRAWING WINNERS

I'm leaving tonight for a week in Oregon, so decided to do the drawing today instead of tomorrow to make sure that I got it posted.

The winners are:

ANNA H - Full sample pack

HOLLY GOODHEAD - Full sample pack

LAURIE BROWN - Modified sample pack


Runners-up will receive two samples each:

YUKI

KARIN ARCHIBALD

I really appreciate everyone who left a comment!

Please e-mail me (olympicorchids-at-gmail-dot-com) with your full shipping address. I will send your samples the week of July 14.

I just realized that my contact e-mail doesn't show up under either of my profiles! Another of Blogger's little random bugs. I'll try to fix it once I'm back from my trip.

[Photo on the beach at Seaside, on last fall's trip to Oregon]

WINNER OF THE FRAGRANCE EVENT DESIGN DRAW

The random drawing took place this morning, and the winner of the 30 ml bottle is ..... GAIL! The runner-up is .... TARA DURKAN. Tara, you will get 5-sample set. Just e-mail me with your choices and complete mailing address. My contact info is in the profile section. Congratulations to the winners, and a huge thank-you to everyone who commented.

A PERFUME SHOW ON HOME TURF AND WINNERS OF THE DRAWING

Today I’m recovering from the Seattle Artisan Fragrance Salon, unpacking bags and boxes, downloading photos from my camera, taking care of university stuff that fell through the cracks last week, and updating my website with the three new fragrances that I launched at the show. While I was posting this, a review of two of the new fragrances came out on Cafleurebon, along with a drawing for a full bottle of your choice! 

Today was also the day of the drawing for samples of the three new fragrances along with a small box of chocolates to go with Seattle Chocolate. 

I decided to draw two winners: Nadja and Miss Conduct.

If you are a winner, please e-mail me and send me your correct full name and mailing address. You can find my e-mail here under the profile section. I worry a little about the chocolate truffles melting during shipping, so if you think this might be a problem, let me know and I’ll just send the samples.

Not having to travel to get to the show had its pros and cons. The good thing was that we could load everything into the car and bring more items than if we had to travel. Best of all was the ability to bring some live orchid plants to decorate the table, and the ability to procrastinate on packing until the night before. The down side was that, not having to factor in shipping time, I did wait until the very last minute to prepare everything.

We had a perfect day to be on the pier overlooking Puget Sound. The sun was shining full force, and the outside temperature was actually warm enough to be comfortable in short sleeves, sandals, and no winter coat! I had two new banners that really made the display look nice. Attendance wasn’t as good as it could have been, but those who did attend all seemed genuinely interested. There didn’t seem to be as many walk-ins from the chocolate salon as there had been in San Francisco, possibly because the two events were in separate rooms.

I launched three new fragrances, California Chocolate, Tropic of Capricorn, and Seattle Chocolate. All of them were well-received at the salon, and are now listed for sale on my website. I’ve written about California Chocolate and Tropic of Capricorn before, and will write about the making of Seattle Chocolate within the next day or two.

For now, I’m happy to be home with no travel coming up any time soon.

WEDNESDAY GRAB BAG: WINNERS OF THE HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY, WHAT I LOVE ABOUT ORCHIDS, AND KUDOS FOR BALLETS ROUGES

First off, here are the winners of the Holiday Giveaway:

50 ml atomizer bottle of Red Cattleya: TAFFY

Coming to My Senses by Alyssa Harad: LINDALOO

The names were chosen by my usual method of balled-up scraps of paper mixed thoroughly and drawn from a hat. No one really seemed to want the fragrance oils, so I’ll hang onto them for the time being. If you are a winner, please e-mail me with your full shipping information. You can just click on the e-mail link on my profile page. 

It’s been a busy December. As a consequence, it’s been about a month since I set foot in the greenhouse, so I was dreading what I’d find when I finally went in there. I half expected everything to be dehydrated, with a lot of dead plants, but I should have known better. Not only had nothing died, everything seemed to have grown, and some plants were even in bloom. There was a young Neofinetia plant that had decided to become beautifully variegated on its new growth, so that made me happy! What I have come to love about epiphytic orchids is their phenomenal survival skills. They can live happily without water for months, tolerate extremes of temperature as long as they don’t freeze much, go for years without fertilizer of any kind, and still stand up and bow and say “thank you” to their grower. The best thing of all is that the orchids survive even when the little ferns and oxalis that insist on appearing as weeds in their pots have shriveled and died, making it unnecessary for me to weed.

With the December holidays come all of the musings on the past year, including “best of the year” lists. I’m ecstatic to report that Olympic Orchids Ballets Rouges made Cafleurebon’s “Best of 2012” list, where it was awarded “Best Bang for the Buck”! I’m particularly happy about this award, because superb value for the money is one of the things I strive for in my business, and it couldn’t have been more fitting. Having spent a good bit of my life as a “starving academic/starving artist”, I have a lot of sympathy for those who want to enjoy nice things on a budget. Huge thanks to Michelyn Camen for her strong support of so many indie perfumers throughout the year!

Ballets Rouges was named one of the year’s top rose perfumes on The Alembicated Genie, where all of the perfumers who contributed to the Devilscent Project also received a lot of love. Much love goes right back to Sheila Eggenberger, the only blogger (as far as I know) who regularly writes mini-novels about perfumes that manage to be both entertaining and informative.

The year 2012 has been good, and more musings from my side will come in a new year’s post next week. For now, I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to being part of the amazing local and international perfume community in a very fragrant 2013!