This time of year can be very tricky for a lot of us and I'm one of those people.

One of the techniques I have to getting through the dark days of winter is actually to do the old fashioned counting of my blessings/meditation on gratitude.

As part of this process, I'm writing this message to say thank you to all of the people who support this small business. All of you who visited the markets, liked my social media posts, and thank you to customers who placed their trust in this business and ordered candles, soaps, balms and detergents for yourself, family and friends. I hope you are enjoying this crafty business adventure with me :)

These candle and soap projects have been a joy to design, make and share.

I expanded into more fun novelty scents this year! Lemon Tea Cake, Honey Butter Bread (seriously smells like delicious sweet bread), Boozy Apple, luscious Midnight Blackberry soap and candles, and soon to be uploaded...just in time to be late for pumpkin spice season, we have a Pumpkin Spice Buttercream.

We started up a really successful line of lip balms that are easy to pick up at an outdoor market or add to any web order at $5, with great real ingredients like shea butter, cocoa butter, beeswax, vitamin E oil, and avocado oil with fun lightly scented flavors; Vanilla, Strawberry, Banana, Peppermint, Orange and coming soon Lemonade.

This year we had a lot more outdoor events that were FUN. All in Jersey City this year (separate blog post to come).  Thanks to: All About Downtown Jersey City, Bergen Day Fair, Speer Cemetery Open Mic Night, Riverview Park Holiday Market, SMUSH Gallery Artist Market for JC Fridays, The Rooftop at The Ashford on Newark Ave., and finally thanks to Moore's (Place) Lounge on Monticello and McGinley Square Neighborhood Association for letting us have a little table on the side at your holiday party--I did not know about the Sunday night jazz improv with tap dancers!

I was able to work on my skills and improve and make a lot more mistakes--in a good way.

Coming in 2024: my hope is to get our wholesale catalog together and partner up with a dear gift industry friend who agreed to give it a try selling to his local NJ shops. I was hoping to get this going for 2023, but it's been good to learn what works and what doesn't with customers before pushing to retailers. I have a better sense of what folks are looking for and what will work for boutiques.

Next year it would be fun to branch out to outdoor markets in other NJ towns. My dream list looks like: Montclair, Maplewood, Summit, Rutherford and Collingswood. That's pretty ambitious I'll probably need to choose 2.

Please reach out to me with your comments, wish list, market ideas, good gift reactions, product experience, anything you think I should know.

*Also, FYI, I finally (!) figured out the product review app for this shopify website, so if you have bought something good from Present Day Candles this year it would be helpful to me and other scented candle and handmade soap customers to post your reviews of products you have enjoyed. 

Thank you and see you next year, have a wonderful winter holiday break and be kind to yourself and to as many people as possible!