Seattle isn't exactly known for its street food. At least, not in the way that Portland has embraced its food vending carts that are seriously everywhere downtown and usually delicious, where you can get everything from vegan Thai to greasy Mexican. But I had the fortune of experiencing two Seattle street food institutions this weekend: Taco Truk (though I'm still not sure if it was THE Taco Truk from Eastlake/Stranger fame) and Tandoozy, a tandoori street food vendor at Seattle's Fremont Sunday Fair.

"We wanted to do one thing and do it really well," said Craig, the maker of Tandoozy's outside grills and fine, fine chicken tikka, after explaining that they founded Tandoozy as an experiment and upon request from a friend.

I haven't decided yet if we're going to stick with the four-perfumes-per-quarter release thing this year or not, but in the meantime: have a new fragrance! Our limited edition Valentine's Day fragrance, called Amelia, was released in our Etsy shop over the weekend. This is the fabled icy-bergamot-of-death / tuberose-black-cherry concoction I was tweeting about last month. It is sultry, sexy, and sinful, but ethereal and musky with twinges of wood. To boot, $5 from every bottle of Amelia sold will go to the American Red Cross Haiti relief, and the first five bottles sold will come with a FREE Madeline cupcake fizzie made by our good friends at Dirty Laundry. Only 8 ounces of this aviatrix-inspired fragrance have been brewed and after that, it's gone!

In other new news, although this may not be news to most of you, I decided to update our packaging for 2010 with actual waterproof labels rather than the twine-hung tags we'd used in 2009. We've begun the update on our glass bottled fragrances and will figure out what to do with our solid perfumes + other potential offerings soon, but we've had some really great feedback so far about the update. Everything from "stunning!!!" via Twitter, to "they're both like a classical book cover and an event announcement" via our Facebook fan page, where I debuted the new product photography last night — which I'm pleased as punch to say I took myself.

Also notably, our full size (1/2 ounce bottles) now ship in 100% recycled brown jewelry boxes, tied with some custom silk screened ribbon that was handmade by Taylor Made Designs on Etsy.

That's enough for you to chew on momentarily; in the meantime, I want to know what you think about the new look.

Everything begins in parts, it seems. Labels start in full sheets and then get cut down to size (by hand, mind you). Bottles start in pieces — the container, the pump, the overshell. There are so many bits and pieces to the perfume manufacturing puzzle, but I'm getting much faster at doing it all by hand.

I want to be better about documenting our processes. I don't mean in the "step one: decant into bottle" kind of documentation but mostly in photographs. It's a good reminder for me on days when I think nothing will ever get done that actually we can make a whole lot by ourselves, and the end result is almost always fabulous. So I took these the other night while we manufactured a bunch of mini misters:

So simple, and yet I love how a huge row of them makes me feel like we put together an army of fragrance samples. These are available exclusively on our Etsy shop for now in packs of 4.

I've been mistakenly posting a lot of links to my personal twitter account before I post to the blog, forgetting that my blog feeds there thanks to HootSuite — so if you saw this link already, I apologize. But they're too good to leave sitting wrapped up in a shortened URL. These color photos of Russia ca. 1917 are too damned good to not post (via Newsweek).

PROTIP: you might see some Russia-inspired perfumes in the coming seasons around here; Russian Languages was my major and I still have an intense fascination for the place. More on that later, though. (See, it's all relative.)

We like it wild has been an ongoing series at Design*Sponge lately that never fails to disappoint. From flower spotlights to studio tours, this column has me hooked. I think it sprouted up in place of Weeder's Digest, and I'm tuning for sure. Bookmark and fall in love. Don't thank me, thank them.

This has reminded me to try to post my photos from our trip this past weekend to Volunteer Park's Dahlia Garden. Yes. Whenever I get to those C.O. Bigelow photos as well. mental note

We had a fantastic time at the Punk Rock Flea Market this past weekend, and had a wonderful time talking up the brand and spreading the word -- especially about our custom perfume services.

I don't have a lot of time before my NYC trip so I thought I'd leave you with two things: first, a taste of some of our new item photos from the always-amazing Angel Ceballos, and last but not least, some wonderful reviews of my perfumes from Beth, who we've now seen at a couple of craft shows this spring. Thanks so much for the feedback, Beth!

Until next week, enjoy the photos!

I'll admit, I'm lazy about blogging these days. I've been busy & by the time I get around to posting an entry, I'm kind of "meh" about the subject & move on to something else to do that all over again. But I can't not blog about my weekend spent with my dad and step-mom, so here we go. Let's see if we can do this justice. :)

My dad and step-mom flew in from Texas last week and we had a really fantastic time. OK, that's it. Done with post...

Just kidding! The first thing we did was head over to the Coastal Kitchen on Capitol Hill, whose proprietor also happens to own one of our other favorite eats, the Hi-Life (in Ballard). The food was fantastic, and we had fun catching up. I had the rockfish, and we had a trio of desserts that included the absolute best key lime pie I have ever had. They were pretty tired from the trip (it's so grueling to fly from Lubbock to Seattle these days that it's easier to drive to Albuquerque and fly from there). And thus began our insane weekend of Seattle eats.

During a round of shipping this afternoon, I happily received an e-mail from our photographer, Angel Ceballos (yes, of the perfume fame), and just had to share. I've been hankering for new photography for awhile (the ones on this site were taken in 2007!) and her photos are always sooo amazing. I'm so lucky to have found her right here in Seattle.

More photos are on the way, and we'll be updating the imagery on the site as they come in. For some other beautiful photos of our perfumes (along with a recent rave review), be sure to check out Wiley Valentine's blog and read what Rachelle has to say.