Our Story/Laurelstone Soaps

(Laurie Fiesel)

Who we are:

   I grew up in a California city, ever longing for the country. God blessed me with a wonderful, loving, husband in 1977 and we have been in Oregon, living on a small farm, for 46 years to date.

   I've always been fascinated with how pioneers survived, and the many things they had to do, and through the years have tried my hand at several of them. But the creativity of making soap was what stole my heart!

   Originally it was made from ashes & animal fat, two very unpleasant elements! Yet, when mixed together, along with some lovely things, it can be silky-soft and luxurious! (which makes me smile, thinking of God, when we allow Him to come into our messy lives. He can make them beautiful, gives us purpose, and lets us know we are of great value.)  It also makes me think of the butterfly, which starts out as a lowly worm or caterpillar and emerges as something extraordinarily beautiful.

   I love the creativity & challenge of making the best product possible! In the beginning I used every fat and oil I could find to make a one-oil soap and recorded how each one felt. Then decided what properties to incorporate in my own.

   Years later when I started using colors, I tried all the natural elements available (well, maybe not “all” of them). Eventually I came to the conclusion that I like the brighter colors better, so used more mica's and pigments.

Where we've been:

   Over more than 37 years of making soap, we have been at several fairs in Oregon and Washington,  and other events, washing thousands of hands with an old fashioned bowl & pitcher, and selling soap. It is our loyal customers who have given me the most encouragement as they came back year after year telling us how amazingly moisturizing, skin softening, and long lasting our bars are.

   We loved meeting our customers and being with people. Now that we are changing our pace and probably not doing them any more, we will miss it!

Our Mission:

   First and foremost is to honor the Lord in all we do.  Then it is to create the most wonderful, moisturizing, skin softening soap possible to turn your bath/shower into a moment of luxurious joy!

Our Soaps:

​   With over 37 years of experience and more than 2,500 batches, our soap is some of the best we've ever known!  It is luxurious, skin softening, (have I said that before?) nourishing, and very long lasting! The bars all feel silky-soft, and lather well!
   The goat's milk bars are specially formulated to be very rich, creamy, and good for all of your skin (body and face!). They feel  luxurious on all skin types.
   The vegetable oil soaps have luscious butters in them such as Shea, Mango & Avocado, good for body, face and even hair.

All Natural?

   The term “all natural” is undefined by government standards and therefore can often be misleading.

   Though many people today are looking for “all natural” products, the U.S. FDA (food and drug) has not approved most natural colorants for soap as a cosmetic. In order to legally mention the skin softening benefits of soap, it must be designated as a cosmetic. So mica's and approved pigments are the colorants of choice in order to tell you how incredibly wonderful our soaps are & how they make you feel (which led to the creation of my "misfit" page where some of the colors used before do not comply). Those are now simply the "discontinued" soaps on our Goat's Milk Tall page. 

Note about Lye:

   All soap is made with lye (sodium hydroxide). Without lye there is no soap! (by definition). So when people say "there is no lye in theirs", what they mean is that the soap is fully cured, and "saponified" (turned into soap) so that there is no free lye still roaming around in it. :-) That's like saying there are no eggs in a cake because now it's all cake. :-)

 

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