About Overhill Lane
Overhill Lane wasn’t always a small business. ANCIENT HISTORY
My parents used to make “lye soap”, to use as a laundry detergent booster, when I was a child. I remember vividly watching them go through the soap-making process from the safe vantage point of sitting on the cellar steps and peering across the unfinished basement of our family home. Because lye was being used and i
t wasn’t safe for children to be present during the mixing. I completely understand that safety issue now, but as a child (and because it was “off-limits”) it intrigued me as to what magic they were conjuring up near the laundry tubs. Coming from a large family, the “lye soap” was in constant use in our household. Many loads of laundry were whitened and brightened using this homemade soap. It certainly didn’t smell or look very appealing, but our clothes always looked great after it was used. Fast-forward a few years to me grating Fels-Naptha® soap bars into my own laundry (especially whites and linens). It worked, but it just wasn’t quite the same. CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
A few more decades pass and I’m surfing the internet for a “recipe” so I can make my own “lye soap”. A quick search query and I find plenty of links to some good (and bad) information on soap-making. Months of research, forum discussions, and experimentation ensue. During all of the research and learning, I found that I can also make beautiful, skin-loving soaps by using higher-quality ingredients, fragrances, and colorants. Design ideas were swimming through my head faster than I could jot them down. I just knew I had to try it for myself. I will admit that my first soaps weren’t much to look at, but they were pretty good for a beginner. But I knew I could do better and with each batch they improved. My goal was to find the correct balance of cleansing and gentleness. My family and friends were willing and eager testers for my many, many trials. They provided supportive feedback on the qualities they enjoyed in the soaps. They were also thoughtfully truthful when the recipe still needed some work. I have modified and fine-tuned my soap recipe and re-tested it until I felt happy with the quality of the bar and the benefits it can provide to skin-care. When I began getting requests for more “samples”, I knew that it wasn’t just my own opinion that my soap was well-received by those who tried it. I took the next step and began my business. It has been a slow, gently-growing business, but one that I can be proud to present to my customers without falling short of their expectations on product quality. I have also branched into other bath & body products to complement the soaps. Overhill Lane now offers lotions, body butters, bath truffles, bath bombs, bubble bars, body sprays, novelty items, etc. in addition to the soaps that started it all. New products are constantly requested, researched, developed, and tested to be sure that the quality is there before they get to the customers. WHAT’S IN A NAME? Overhill Lane may seem not very straight-forward in describing a bath & body products business, but it has a story, too. When my husband and I purchased our home, we found that the back of our property was bordered by a “paper street” called Overhill Lane. It is a gravel road that seems to be just a really long driveway that leads to the neighbor’s house on the hill. Not very visually exciting, right? But to me the name conjured images of a cottage in a glen, surrounded by nature, and the path that ran in front of this imaginary cottage was Overhill Lane. It is a fairly silly vision for a gravel driveway, but that truly was the inspiration for my company name. The name Overhill Lane has always had that affect on me. It just seems to transport me to a “cottage” state-of-mind. And since I was starting a “cottage industry” it seemed the right choice for my new business name. For me, Overhill Lane embodies the attention-to-detail, handcrafted, & artisan imagery that I want others to see in my products when they make a purchase from Overhill Lane.
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So let’s take a stroll down Overhill Lane to see what products you might find to take along with you on your journey to better skin care.
