Ask anyone who works at Lori’s what their favorite time of year is and you will get the same answer. It is the moment the holiday scents come out of the curing racks and the whole shop starts to smell like a bakery that also happens to sell sea sponges.
They are here now. Eleven holiday scents, the same handmade goat’s milk and olive oil bars we make all year, poured and cut by hand at our shop on the boardwalk at John’s Pass. You can order them online or come pick your favorites off the shelf.
What the shop smells like in December
Walk in the door around the holidays and the first thing that hits you is gingerbread. Then cinnamon and baked apple, then something sweet and toasty underneath it all. Customers stop in the doorway. It happens every year and we never get tired of it.
That is not a candle or a diffuser. It is the soap. A few hundred bars of it, curing on wooden racks in the back, all of them working at once.
The eleven holiday scents
We split them roughly into three families, and most people end up with one from each.
The bakery ones. Christmas Cookie is the bestseller and has been for years — warm vanilla and sugar, exactly what you want it to be. Gingerbread is spicier, with real molasses warmth. Toasted Marshmallow is sweet and a little smoky. Pumpkin Crunch carries fall into December for the people who are not ready to let it go.
The apple ones. Apple Pie is baked apple and cinnamon, straight down the middle. Caramel Apple is sweeter and stickier-smelling, like a boardwalk in October. Apple & Oak is the grown-up of the three — crisp apple with a dry, woody finish that reads more like a cologne than a dessert.
The Christmas ones. All I Want For Christmas is bright and citrusy with a pine edge. Victorian Christmas is the old-fashioned one: clove, orange and evergreen, the kind of smell that belongs on a mantelpiece. Evening Snow is cool and clean, closer to fresh air than to food. And then there is Reindeer Poop, which is our best-selling gag gift and, for the record, smells like chocolate.
Same bar, holiday scent
Nothing else changes. Every holiday bar is made the way we make soap the rest of the year: goat’s milk instead of water for a richer, creamier lather, extra-virgin olive oil for softness, poured into molds, cut by hand and left to cure properly before it goes anywhere near a shelf.
They are $3.75 a bar, the same as the rest of our goat’s milk soap. If you want the longer version of why we make soap this way, we wrote it up on our goat’s milk and olive oil page.
They make very good small gifts
A holiday bar is the thing you hand the teacher, the mail carrier, the neighbor who watered your plants, the cousin you drew in the gift exchange. It is under four dollars, it looks and smells like something that cost more, and nobody has ever opened one and looked disappointed.
Pair a bar with a small natural sea sponge and you have a gift that is genuinely nice to receive and still easy on the budget. Plenty of our customers buy a dozen at a time in November and work through the list.
A word about how fast they go
We make seasonal scents in small batches, which is the honest trade-off of doing it by hand. Christmas Cookie and Gingerbread usually go first. When a scent runs out, that is it until next year.
So if you have a favorite, this is the part where we tell you not to wait. Order early, or call the shop at (727) 954-3417 and we will set some aside for you.
Come see us, or we will ship it
We are at 12917 Village Blvd in John’s Pass Village, Madeira Beach, right on the boardwalk. Here is how to find us. If you are not in Florida, order the holiday bars here and we will ship anywhere in the U.S.
And if you do come in, take a second in the doorway. That smell is the whole reason this is our favorite time of year.
Questions we get asked
When are the holiday scents available?
They are available now, both in the shop at John’s Pass and online. We make them in small batches through the season, and individual scents sell out as we go.
How much is a holiday bar?
$3.75, the same as our regular goat’s milk bars. The holiday scent does not change the price.
Which holiday scent should I get first?
Christmas Cookie if you want the crowd-pleaser, Victorian Christmas if you want something more old-fashioned, and Reindeer Poop if you are buying for someone with a sense of humor. It smells like chocolate.
Can I buy the holiday scents as a gift set?
Call the shop at (727) 954-3417 and we will put a set together for you. We do this all season for customers working through a gift list.
Do the holiday bars ship?
Yes. We ship anywhere in the U.S. from the shop, and orders go out the same way our regular soap does.
