Cute Lollipop Display!

photo from theTomKatStudios.com

We were happy to provide some teal blue Bubble Gum lollipops (instead of their usual neon pink) for a mermaid themed kids birthday party. They look beautiful, and I love that they filled the white container with gum balls! How perfect is that?

Want to be a taste-tester?

photo by Kevin Keeker

We are looking for a second (and final!) round of taste-testers. We are experimenting with our lollipop recipe and we need your help!

Specifically, if you live in Seattle or the surrounding areas (or will be visiting Seattle - we don't discriminate), we will be distributing Salted Caramel lollipops that are made with 2 different sugars. We need you to eat them both - a hardship, we know - and then tell us what you think! Which one tastes better? Do they taste different? Which one is less sticky? We want to know!

The details:
When: Monday April 16th, 4pm - 7pm
Where: The Wandering Cafe, 7533 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA
(You can RSVP to the Facebook event if you're a Facebook user.)

We'll give you the 2 lollipops, a small paper with some questions, and you'll email us your answers by May 1st. It's that simple.

Thanks for your help!

The fine print: no more than two sets of samples per customer. Any recipe changes won't happen until 2013. At this time, we can't ship samples to customers.

What Kate & Susan are Talking About

Yay, a new hockey movie!

Gourmet horseradish. My husband LOVES horseradish, so of course I sent this to him.

If you didn't see this earlier in the week: Ashley Judd is awesome.

Did you know that cheese has morphine? The article doesn't mention any pain-killing effects - we're wondering if it's merely addictive without the side benefits. Anyone out there know?

Did you miss Dyngus Day? Or Anderson Cooper cracking up over it?

Octopuses* are awesome - 60% of their neurons are in their arms.

* A note from the dictionary on my computer about the plural of octopus: "Because this word is actually of Greek origin—not Latin—the classical plural is octopodes (ok- top-uh-deez), not octopi. But the standard plural is octopuses."

Guess what's back in the shop?

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

That's right! Our fabulous, amazing Love Triangle lollipops are back in the shop today.

Why do we care about packaging?

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

Susan and I love beautiful things. We are happier when things look pretty - I think that's one of the reasons that I enjoy making Etsy treasuries so much. Collecting beautiful things together puts a smile on my face.

Beautiful things are also enormously inspiring. They make my thoughts flow more smoothly, which makes me more productive.

We want our lollipops to be as lovely as possible. That's one reason we test not only the flavors, but the colors. The packaging also plays a big role. We want the lollipops' wrappers and the bags they come in tell you about the quality of the product you're getting inside. Not to mention that I believe that if something tastes better if it looks good. We want every aspect of your lollipop experience to be a pretty, happy one.

That's why we care about packaging.

It's the Finnish Name Factor

When Susan & her friend Deb managed a fantasy hockey team, they had a weakness for Finnish players because their names tend to be much more awesome than any other nationality's. They called this "The Finnish Name Factor". We won't talk about whether this strategy actually helped their fantasy team, though...

Ahem! Finland. It's a cool place (see what I did there?). They have a language that's practically unrelated to any others, and there are LOTS of vowels and double letters.

April from Regretsy made a trip to meet her readers from Finland last year, including a wonderful gentleman named Petja. Now, her fabulous, wonderful fans have made it possible for Petja to visit the US. We're donating some lollipops to Petja-Palooza, with custom labels that feature in-jokes from the Regretsy community (read up on the hellephant here).

We're not *quite* sure what the Finnish swear word "perkele" means, but the urban dictionary and wikipedia are here to help us out. The urban dictionary's definition is more colorful, so I'll quote it here:

Most likely the most powerful curseword ever created by mankind. Cannot be translated without loss. Versatile word that can be used alone or repeated indefinitely.

So there you have it. We've donated lollipops with foreign curse words on them. I hope we don't go to hell for this one.