Local soap: Moon Valley Organics (Creamsicle)

The more I look around, the more I find that independent folks and local folks are making great-smelling, natural-ingredient soaps. I'm not a stickler for organic and natural ingredients (I live in a house where Diet Coke is the beverage of choice -- artificial works for me), but it's always neat to see what people come up with in that arena. Local places are also fun to shop from; I like the idea of giving my money to smaller and local businesses.

Review: Soap from Moon Valley Organics
Scent: Creamsicle

Moon Valley Organics is a local company right around the corner from me -- they're located in Arlington, Washington. Around here, you can find their soaps both at Pike Place Market and at the local Whole Foods. The Pike Place Market shop is a lot of fun; samples are all around the outside of the store, and if you want more (or less) of a soap than what's in a bar, they'll sell it to you by the ounce.

I picked up two ounces each of Creamsicle and Chocolate Comfrey, as well as a bar of Mint Sage -- I'm a sucker for mint. The first one to come up in the rotation was Creamsicle, so that's what I'll be babbling about today. :)

Look: Creamsicle is a medium-orange color with little speckles of darker orange to it. It's a standard sort of hand-made bar soap, hand-cut, etc.

Feel: Perfectly smooth soap that lathers well under water and rinses clean.

Ingredients: MVO is very proud of its natural ingredients, which -- for this soap -- include the following: Saponified oils of Organic Safflower, organic coconut oil and Organic Palm, Organic Red Palm, Beeswax, *Sweet orange oil, Vanilla Fragrance, *Castor oil, Raw honey, *Paprika, *Castor oil, and Rosemary extract. All starred ingredients are organically grown or wildcrafted. Creamsicle is listed as petroleum-free, cruelty-free, and made of 84% organic ingredients.

Lifespan: It took me a good week to use up a half-ounce sample of this stuff; it definitely does not melt right away.

Scent: The first time I sniffed it, I thought, Hey, wow, it's a creamsicle! It's definitely got that orange-and-vanilla scent to it, and anyone who was a fan of those ice cream bars in their youth (or, hey, nowadays) will find it familiar.

When you come right down to it, though, I'm a single-note kind of girl. I'm often willing to give combination scents a shot if they smell good on first whiff, or if they're a combination that sounds interesting to me. But it takes a lot to get me interested in combinations, and this one has an herbal thread running through it that just didn't grab me in the long run. I'm not sure if that's the paprika or the honey or the rosemary, but something in there just isn't for me. I'm hoping I'll like the mint sage and chocolate comfrey a little better. :)