Sugar Loaf 38th Annual Fall Festival

For a very fun time in the Hudson Valley, come celebrate the Fall on Columbus Day Week End in Sugar Loaf NY!!

Live Music, Artists and Artisans displaying their work and Good Food for Everyone!

Don't miss our 38th Annual Craft Fair!

Walk for a Cure Fundraiser: Breast Cancer

"One in seven" is the statistic for breast cancer today. Pretty frightening right? It makes you wonder what has changed so much in 2 generations for there to be such a dramatic increase in the statistics? I think it is safe to say that all of us know someone (possibly ourselves) either close or not so close, but we all know someone who has undergone or is undergoing the gruesome conditions of this illness.

The Artisan Hamlet of Sugar Loaf NY, is sponsoring an individual in her Avon: Walk for a Cure Fundraiser, Sunday September 5th. For this event we have created a special soap: it is an oval vegetable glycerine soap scented with aromatherapeutic oil of rose. 33% of the proceeds on the sale of this soap will go to this fundraiser.

Many stores in the Hamlet will be making products specifically for this event. Come and give your support, visit us next Sunday September 5th! See the Sugar Loaf website for directions. wwwsugarloafnewyork.com (see "links" above)

Ingredients: Bare Bones Philosophy.

What is fascinating about soap is that it can take different shapes, sizes, smells and colors and the final product gives satisfaction to so many. Soap is something we use daily and though it can be luxurious, it is very basic.

When we started to make soaps and body care products, we decided we would create a bar from the finest ingredients and as pure as possible. We wanted people to come back and say: "This is the best soap I ever used, it makes me feel so good!", and we hear it regularly.

What is the secret of the quality of our soaps and products? It is very simple: our ingredients. Living in France taught us the importance of knowing our ingredients, and that quality of ingredient makes the difference between what is good and what is excellent.

Being spiritually connected to the mediterranean, we knew we wanted to use olive oil as a base. Olive oil is a wonderous oil in that it will both moisturize and balance your skin, which very few oils can do. Olive oil is also readily absorbed by the skin and has a natural SPF of 9. The only disadvantage of olive oil is its very small lather, more like a cream and it remains soft. In order to get around that we added coconut oil for lather and palm oil to make a harder bar. All the oils we use are food grade and can be eaten as well as applied to the skin.

Wanting our soaps to do more than just cleanse, we knew we had to use essential oils for their medicinal benefits. Essential oils are extracted from plants and flowers and have been known through history for their many therapeutic qualities. In future posts I will introduce some of the basic essential oils and their known benefits.

We use few ingredients but they are excellent quality and basic, so no additives are necessary in order to make up for cheap ingredients. The combination of our ingredients makes a soap which is free of synthetic chemicals, lathering agents, parabens, petro-chemicals or other harmful ingredients. We believe that as the largest organ of the body, the skin needs to be treated with care and awareness.

Logo: The Story of Our Cactus

For years we lived with a large cactus outside our blue door. It stood with its arms raised high, forever welcoming us back to our home . Before moving to Sugar Loaf NY, we kept sadly looking at it, knowing full well we could not take it with us.

As we approached our departure date, after years of never giving flowers, our cactus gave us five flowers, one for each of us. We saw in that flowering a generous blessing of our new endeavor.

By then we knew we'd take the cactus with us by making it our logo.

Welcome to Rosner Soap, Our Story.

Twelve years ago we opened a soap store in the artisans community of Sugar Loaf NY, since then every week a customer asks us: "How did you start making soap?", here is the story:

One day walking in a lively city street we happened upon a beautiful store that looked like a bakery but was actually a soap store, Yaron and I simultaneously looked at each other and said: "We can do this!". We asked the lady working there : "How do you make soap?", a question we now need to answer everyday, and from there on the soap making started for us.

In 1998 after living many years abroad, mostly in France, we decided to return to the USA. We began looking for a community where we could maintain the quality of our family life and make a living. We sought something that would combine and express our strengths and desire, to create beautiful and healthy products. Yaron has a background in photography and design and mine is health and natural medicine. Upon deciding to return to the USA, a friend told us about Sugar Loaf, a small hamlet not far from New York City, where artisans and artists live and work all year round.

Sugar Loaf was so small that at first we couldn't see it on the map, when we finally found it, we fell in love with the authenticity, the rustic look of the houses and the eclectic mix of people. Sugar Loaf seemed to offer the quality of family life we were looking for.