A few years back, I was talking to a friend of mine (Ok, it was Google) when it came up in conversation (uhm, search results) that you could make lip balm that smelled like chocolate in your kitchen. Whaaaaat?!!! Yes, it was true. My friend also helped me find places to order the ingredients from, and about $150 later (you know, go big or go home, right?), I had everything I needed (or impulse bought). By this point, I was yet another version of Sylvie. She was a mom to a toddler and very pregnant with a second baby, and she promptly justified her big spend with the following reasons: 1. I need a freakin' hobby already and this will be fun! 2. When is the last time I bought anything for myself anyway?!! And she was right on both counts. It's not often she had the energy for much more than Netflix and ice cream after coming home from work and putting a little one to bed, but there is magic in finding something you love doing that will have you burning the midnight oil without a second thought. (uhm, you may burnout a few months later but that's a whole other post!)
Since it was right before Christmas and I had enough stuff to make A LOT of lip balm, I decided they would make great stocking stuffers for EVERYONE!!! To my surprise, my family didn't roll their eyes and me and actually liked them. Haha! They may regret feeding the monster now! So I started making more, tweaking the recipe, taking flavour requests and yes, buying more stuff... If I could reinvest the money I've spent on trying ingredients over the years, well let's just say I might have been able to go on more vacations... I may have even gone as far as to send out free lip balms to Facebook friends if they promised to fill out a survey for me (Ok, I totally did that and they got those from the photo below!). My inner marketing geek and 12 year old lip balm addict had formed an unlikely friendship, and they were having a blast! But it was just for fun, right? I wouldn't actually make a business out of this, I mean, how realistic would that be? What about you? Has Google ever led you down a rabbit hole that turned out to be a great adventure? Or maybe it was a dating site... Heheh, that one happened to me too!
