Welcome!!

      My name is Amie. Together with my fiancée, Tom, we have created Maddie’s Essentials. This is my first blog so bear with me and if you have something constructive to say, go ahead and reach out! 

      I wanted to give a bit of the back story to Maddie’s Essentials, so our customers and whoever may decide to follow along understand what has gone into our products. 

      This all started when I was pregnant with my first baby, Madison. As with all newly pregnant women, the first concern is what we need to stop using as it isn't safe during pregnancy. I started with toiletries. I knew we needed to switch them out but the only things we found were loaded with chemicals and I wasn’t sure I wanted to try using them while I was pregnant. We also knew that we didn't want Madison going through the same journey of finding safe and effective skin care products when she got older and would love for her to grow up with amazing products.  So, we decided to make our own.

      The very first lesson we learned is that soap making takes a long time to get started and, well, we kinda needed something NOW. So we researched all-natural soaps for what felt like forever, until we came across a company that does truly all-natural and mostly organic soaps. Not just bar soap but also foaming hand soaps and liquid Castile soaps (more on that later). We ordered some samples and absolutely loved it! We gave some samples to our more loyal clients and they were hooked! JACKPOT!

      Next, I needed a moisturizer. Something that wouldn’t evaporate and something that really made a long-standing difference in my skin’s health. After a TON of research and education, trial and error, tweaking, wasted ingredients and money on things that didn’t work, we came up with the formula for our body butter. And everyone we had try it LOVED it too! 

      Being pregnant makes you a little clumsy. It also makes it incredibly hard to bend over enough to scrub out a tub or shower, especially right after you are done and are still wet yourself. Which is why I had to come up with a body scrub that was gentle, effective and not soaked in oil. We tried so many formulations and recipes, I can’t even tell you. I realized we needed to keep it simple. We eventually came up with our current formula (more on that in a later post) and I’m absolutely loving that I don’t need to scrub out the oil slick in the shower/tub anymore. Because it’s not a liquid, I can travel with it. It replenishes my skin while it’s exfoliating, which is an amazing feeling I never realized I was missing (personally) until I felt it. The thing is, a lot of commercial brands SAY this is what they do, so that’s what you think you’re feeling. Once you feel it for real, you’ll realize how diluted the results were with the common brands. 

      The bath salts and bath teas will have their own posts as well, but they each have similar stories. 

      All our products were created (in the case of the soaps, selected) with the utmost attention to detail, with care for those using them and with love. We very honestly do hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed creating them! It is always, absolutely, our pleasure!