If a scent/flavor combination sounds a bit too weird, too obscure, or too… eww, then I’m probably going to try making it. Take this one, for example.

When I started Molly Rose Balms, I was working in a dead-end office job. During our frequent down time, I would occupy myself with brainstorming product ideas. Occasionally I would ask my coworkers for their opinions on certain ideas. One summer day, I was thinking up Christmas flavors. It was my first year so I was starting from scratch, and I was only making lip balms at the time. I had one or two basic ideas that are still in the Molly Rose Holiday Collection, but I was struggling to come up with more complex ideas. Mint vanilla? Boring. Gingerbread? Meh. Sugar cookie? Nope. One of my coworkers laughed because he knew I couldn’t just do basic.

“You need ‘turkey and cranberry’ or ‘pine tree and chocolate’!”

Haha, very funny… Wait…

Then I remembered the Fraser fir. Every year, my family picks a Fraser fir as our Christmas tree. Not only is it one of the more inexpensive, sturdy trees, it also has an incredibly fresh, citrusy note in addition to its traditional fir scent. Add that to the creamy vanilla notes of white chocolate (evoking a more Douglas fir-type scent as well as a fun creamsicle quality), plus the slightly more astringent pine and spruce oils, and a masterpiece is born.

As I said, I was only making lip balms at this time, but this combination was what ultimately led me to make body scrubs by the time Christmas rolled around. They were originally in jars, but after my first MRB Christmas, I switched over to the tubes.