Our Simple Living Shop is Open for Business!

Yesterday, we opened our online simple living shop for business over at Little Green Workshops.

Kim and I have been working on it for over three months, building the web site, adding on an e-commerce facility, sorting out payment gateways, and testing the shipping calculator.

Then came the look and feel of the site.  We went through three iterations of design before we settled upon one we both liked, and it was Kim who came up with the current colour scheme.

Once all that was finalised, we had to work on products, and source them as locally as we could, keeping in line with our values.

We have decided to release our product range in tranches.  Firstly, as we were already selling cheese making kits over on Little Green Cheese, it was an easy decision to begin there.  We expanded the range of kits, added in some equipment, and then bought some more ingredients including cultures and moulds.

The second tranche will be soap making supplies, and finally soy candle supplies.  We have also managed to source handmade gifts like baby quilts, throws, and bags made from second-hand fabric.  My sister Teena has been hard at work making all these products for us.  You can check out some of Teena’s work on her Facebook page, Handmade by Teena.  She is a talented lady.

While I have been busy on the back-end of the shop, Kim as been equally busy photographing the products.  I believe that she has done a wonderful job, and has a talent for this sort of thing.

Miles the Bear acted as our hair net model during the photo shoot!  Miles is Kim’s favourite teddy, so it added a personal touch to the store.

Although not quite ready yet, the soap making product range is going to contain soap making kits, with enough ingredients to make 3 batches of soap.  We will also be selling fragrance oils, botanicals, and exfoliants.

As my cheese making book sells well as an eBook, I thought that if I printed it using 100% recycled post consumer office paper, and bound it, that it would be a worthy addition to the shop.

You probably know that cheese making is one of my passions.  So to share the love, I wanted to go beyond the basic kits that I was already selling with quite a bit of success on my cheese blog Little Green Cheese.  I expanded the range to seven kits, added equipments, as well as ingredients if people wanted to refill their supplies.

Now you would think that was enough, but wait, there’s more.  I even have a blog on the site where I document our workshop events, as well as a list all of our upcoming workshop dates and locations.

In fact, today we taught our last cheese making course for the year.  Four lovely ladies have now been indoctrinated as official curd nerds, having made their very own Mozzarella!  You should have seen the smiles on their faces when they ate some of their finished cheese.  It made this old blokes heart sing.

So there you have it.  We have a shop.  It is open.  It has or soon will have great stuff.  If you want simple living supplies, then please pop on over and check out what we have on offer.

We will be announcing each tranche of products as we release them via the Little Green Workshops newsletter, so if you want to keep informed of our progress, Please sign up using the form below.  Just so there is no confusion, this newsletter is separate than The Greening of Gavin weekly newsletter.

We are very excited to what the future may hold, as we seek out and source ethical, local, and sustainable living products.  We know that it will be difficult at times, and that we may have to make compromises due to regulations and the like, but we are going to stick to our values and offer a unique experience.

I believe there will be no other place like it on the web!