Chapman Plan B

It's raining and things are on hold at the farm. There's just too much to do to have a deadline for opening the shop and farm, so we're going to wait until we have things set up and ready before setting the date again. Today is a shop day. We'll be working to get things in order in there. Forward motion, always.

I'm getting the final submissions in from the perfumery students at the Natural Perfume Academy, and I must say that these perfumers are pretty good already. They are thinking outside of the box and putting in a lot of effort to formulate cohesive and harmonized scents. I'm so proud of them all! When I work on their evaluations, I feel guilty that I'm not working so diligently on my own formulations. I think to get more deeply into it, I'm going to work on formulas I've already created, like Sahar, and perhaps tweak and twist until I get something much more beautiful -- though, Sahar won a blogger's choice award a few years back as-is. I think a less sweet version of Atay, and an exact duplicate of Jamaal are in order as well. It requires space and that's being worked on as well, in the Plum Palace.

It's coming along, our new house, but with this new spot of rain which is to last for a few days, things will be delayed -- again. The electric is finally in, and the outside of the house is being prepped for stucco, all the windows are installed, and the plumbing, air vents, AC lines, etc., so the guts of the house are there. Because we are gluttons for punishment, we spent a good deal of time Sunday looking at other model homes and came to the conclusion that our house was made of better stuff. One model home we looked at had trim in the kitchen area that was broken off, and when I picked up the broken piece and tried to refit it, I noticed that there were several nails in it and the wood that it attached to, and I saw the reason why it kept falling off -- the wood that made up the counter was not cut but torn, as if someone had set it up against a rock and stomped it to break it in half. It was that jagged, uneven piece that they tried nailing the trim. That was never going to work. Plus the cabinets and countertops were made of the cheapest materials they could get. And the homes were about $50,000 more than ours for less square footage. One set of models was made of nicer stuff than our house, but they cost more, and they were being built by the same developer as our house. Speaking of which, when we went to the model of the Plum Palace, we noticed the decorators were there in the back resetting the patio furniture and changing out cushions and whatnot. One of the decorators came in when he noticed we were talking about the upgrades we were going to do with the house on our own, and he said we were right on track with that idea. Why pay the installer all that money when you can have it done by yourself after you buy the house and pay two-thirds less for it? We all agreed it was a good idea. How do you like the house, he asked? And we told him we were having one built and were over the moon about it. Then he asked, "What's your name?" and extended his hand. I took it, told him my name, and then he said, "I'm XXX XXXXXX, good to meet you." He was the developer -- the builder of our home! He was incognito for the first few minutes of our conversation to get a feel for what we thought of his houses. I took it as a sign our home is going to be a good one when the guy building it takes a personal interest in how the models are decorated, and, more importantly, that he thinks it's a good idea to make upgrades after the home is in the owner's possession. He also told us a lot about the appliances that come with the house, which was nice.