Hey Guys!! Just another quick reminder that you can buy our Casa Mascia products at the Placencia Sidewalk Festival this weekend. Annette Vernon (of Placencia Pop-Up Art) will be selling our stuff. She will have all the favourites including our Copal Medicinal Soap, Oil and Ointment. And there is much, much more!! Okay, I am not that good with the marketing jargon… it’s maximum velocity, awesome and out of this world (Ha-Ha)!!
Here are some pictures to entice you:
Have Fun at the Festival!!
Hi Everyone!! I am writing to let you know that Annette Vernon of Placencia Pop-Up Art will be selling our Casa Mascia Apothecary products at the Placencia Sidewalk Festival next weekend. She will have all the following goodies: Copal Medicinal Oil Vials, Copal Medicinal Ointment, Copal Medicinal Soap, Itch Done Gone, Lemongrass Insect Repellent Balm, Jackass Bitters and Neem Soap and White Pitahaya soap. Look out for all these products…
Sorry we won’t be there this year!! If there is anybody that wants something that is not on the list please email me. Cheers and have fun at the festival this year!!
Hello Everyone. This is a late post for me but I decided I had to keep the Blog going to bring the traffic in!! I have noticed that if I don’t write for about three days, our viewing statistics go down. Anyway, we found a whole load of missing Apothecary pictures stuck in a nameless file in the computer. We have downloaded them and I will be sticking them in the appropriate places in our website very soon. Meanwhile, enjoy our picture gallery!
Chocolate Swirl Soap. Hand-made with Toledo cacao and coconut oil.
Our Chocolate Mint Body Wash is made from coconut oil castile soap (totally detergent free) which lathers up very nicely. A must for any chocolate lover out there!
The Lemongrass Foot Spa is great for tired, achy feet. It also acts as a natural deodorant and anti-fungal so it can be used for Athlete’s Foot.
If you feel like treating yourself, why not go for a 32oz (1 litre) Elixir?
Luxury Cacao Butter Soap is one of our new offerings for 2016. Very indulgent with a creamy lather…lovely!!
If you want to see all this stuff plus lots more, please have a look at The Apothecary.
Hello Everyone!! Happy Cyber Monday to you all!! To commemorate this day of spectacular e-commerce shopping, I am offering 10% off ALL Apothecary items today. Sale ends Midnight tonight. Every buyer also gets a Free Collectors’ Edition Vintage Jonas Gift Bag!!
Check out The Apothecary for the new stuff including:
Enjoy Shopping!!
Hello Everyone. We have just delivered some Pet Products to the Farm Store in Punta Gorda. These include Jackass Bitters and Neem Pet Soap and Lime-Sulphur Pet Dip.
The pet soap is made from jackass bitters and neem leaf for control of fleas, ticks and mites without the use of strong chemicals. The Lime-Sulphur Pet Dip is used for more severe infestations of mange, fleas, ticks and ringworm.
Both products are safe to use on your pets. As you can see: our pets love Sulphur Dip Time!
For anyone who lives in Belize, outside of Punta Gorda, we can have these products delivered via Tropic Air. We also ship Internationally. Check out The Apothecary for more information and prices.
Hello Everyone!! Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) will be holding their annual organic fair at PG park today (31st October 2015). We will be there armed with our Casa Mascia Goodies.
This one is always a favourite at fairs: Cheap Sale (or Runaway Sale or Explosive-One-Time-Only Sale or Everything-Must-Go-Sale!!
Come and rummage through our bargain box: there will be all sorts of exciting things (exclusive once off) like Cacao and Lemongrass Insect Repellent, Lavender balm, Grapefruit Balm, Tooth-powder or Tooth-whitener with lovely essential oils and lots more. You can’t beat a bargain!
We will also be selling fresh Balam (Mayan White Cacao) fruit for all you organic gardeners out there.
We will have our usual favourite stuff including Copal Soap, Medicinal Oils and Ointments. Oh, and two buckets of Chocolate Artisan Soap going at a Run-away Price of $5.00 (Best Price, as they say here in Belize)!!
Hope to see y’all there. Otherwise, if you are not in Belize, we’ll have lots of fun photos for laterz.
Hello Everyone!! The tourist season is just round the corner and we are gearing up for the new season. I have added a few more additions to our product list. There are still more new products to come..how exciting!! We are now offering Copal Medicinal Oil in Vial form:
This smaller sized bottle (30ml) is an ideal size for traveling. Copal Medicinal Oil has natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties which can be used for cuts, scrapes, burns, scalds, skin infections, insect bites and fungal infections. For all our Copal fans out there, the medicinal oil is still available in the larger bottle (120ml) and ointment form.
We are also proud to present to your our Castile Coconut Soap also known as “I Can’t Believe It’s Not DB’s!”
We made this because of popular demand for a local liquid soap made from coconut oil. It is completely detergent free and contains no artificial ingredients. It is available in original (unscented), peppermint and orange citrus essential oils. It is mild enough to be used for face, body and hair. In fact, it is so mild that it can be used for sensitive skin and babies.
We also have this brand new Herbal Air Freshener; it has lovely essential oils including clove and lemongrass which act in synergy to remove odours and naturally disinfect the environment.
This nifty little sprayer is great for home use and can double up as a car freshener too. Also, it can remove pet odours without harming animals.
Check out The Apothecary for more detailed information on our products.
Have a good night everyone!!
Hi Everyone, every now and then we have to do the mundane work of website administration. After all, one of the reasons why we took on this Blogging was to try to make some money from the Apothecary. Having done this for almost a year, I can confidently dispel the myth that you can “quit your day job” if you have a website shop. No, people are not flocking to buy our wares on-line. We find that people just enjoy reading our posts especially for the funny stories and the recipes. In turn, we have decided that, despite the lack of monetary return, we will continue Blogging because it is an outlet of expression for both of us, especially in my case. I had aspirations of becoming a writer/ journanlist before I became a medical doctor and I find that I can re-cultivate my writing skills through this form of expression. Besides, it is a really good way of informing family and friends of what we are doing so they need not worry that we are stuck in the middle of nowhere deprived of entertainment and variety.
Apothecary tweaks include:
The Apothecary has been better organised into categories. In the soap section, we are offering soaps in plastic wrap, tin and rolls of 50 to give people more of a choice (and a better price). Also I have added the pictures of the body sprays which have been missing for a whole year. Still more pictures to come…
Also, there is a new Custom Orders page which gives information on special orders. It gives a list of possible products (anything really from hair care to nail care to foot care…you name it..and we will create it) and available Belizean raw materials that can be used to create brand new products. There is a whole list of lovely local stuff; here are some pictures to entice you:
There is still more administration to come including New Products and a full list of Elixirs.
Have a good night!!
We have been busy little bees over the last 6 months or so making Chocolate Artisan Soaps for the new tourist season which starts around November. Here are a collection of pictures to show Gnome’s artistic expression…it is the Italian in him!!
An Artistic Tumble of Chocolate Artisan Soaps. Sheer Indulgence. What Every Woman Secretly Wants!!
Soft Midnight Tones for the New Season:
Add Panache and Flair To Your Bathroom:
Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate and White Chocolate. Delicious and Seductive Warm Colours.
The “Must Have” Chocolate Artisan Soaps. Sets Aside Your Bathroom From The Rest.
Live Life To The Max..Maximal Velocity With Chocolate Soaps.
Truly Casa Mascia, Truly You.
Bathroom Bliss. Gnome: The Style Guru!!
Don’t Forget To Vote For Your Favourite Candidate For The Mayoral Elections 2015!!
Hello Everyone!! It is so difficult finding a time slot to write a post; right now, the Internet is reliable from 4am to about 8am…this is however, our outside farm time and business emailing. After 8am, the Internet is virtually non-existent with a few minutes, now and then, of Internet activity to download emails. Not enough to quickly write a post for a Blog. At about 5pm, the Internet starts back up in spits and spurts…this is when I dive in and take my opportunity. After 6pm, Gnome uses the computer/ Internet to do Linux stuff. Oh and by the way, we share the one computer so that also limits usage.
Sometimes, because of all these complications, there is simply no opportunity to write a post. Hence, the reason why you might get short periods of silence.
Anyway, it was town day today. Instead of waking up at 4am, we made a compromise and woke up at 6am. This is still really early because nothing really starts opening in Punta Gorda until about 9am. The Government offices start at 8am but they aren’t really getting down to business until a later in the morning. If you ask me…the best time to go a Government Office is at 11.30am which is just before lunch. Don’t go at 11.45am because they will already be enroute to their favourite Rice and Beans joint. Supermarkets (the majority are Chinese owned) open after 9am…the Chinese can be a tad tardy and if you drive pass one of this places, you usually see the Belizean workers loitering outside waiting for their Chinese bosses to open shop. It is all very slow and everyone takes their own sweet time to start up.
So, at 6am, we were up and jumping about like hyperactive frogs waiting for the faithful opening hour. Gnome was laughing at the fact that we had to wait three hours for everyone else to start. It is extraordinary how farm life works on a completely different time line from town life! Anyway, we mixed up a batch of chocolate soap in the interim:
We are making Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and White Cocao Butter soap for the new tourist season in November. This is the Milk Chocolate Soap:
Oooooh…looks like you could eat them!!
Anyway, we managed to get into town…trundling along slowly. Here are some pictures of places that we frequent in Punta Gorda.
We usually pick up the “chocolate trash” from The Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory. We use the trash for mulch around our trees:
And this is Tropic Air; we deliver all our orders nation-wide with Tropic Air because they are reliable, very friendly and they have a flight everyday so orders can be dispatched on the same day (yes…you can get 24 hour delivery in Belize).
The staff are absolutely lovely:
After town, we went to visit our friend Isabel at Cotton Tree Lodge.
It was really muddy and wet driving up to the lodge. At one point, our wheels nearly got stuck…we had to go on 4-wheel drive for the whole time. Boy, what a drive…the heavy rains have really made these back roads difficult to travel in.