MY MISSION
Hello! My name is Valerie. I've lived in Crested Butte for over 30 years with my husband Jeff.
This remote, pristine part of Colorado is unique in a few ways. It’s a truly wild and pristine place of heart-stopping beauty, nestled among soaring peaks and buried in snow for 5 months of the year. In the short, sweet summer, the forests and meadows are overflowing with a profusion of healing plants.
I strive to create a super fresh skin care and artisan soaps imbued with the quintessence of this magical place to ultimately share with you the healing power of nature contained within it.
I do this by carefully collecting small amounts of medicinal plants from the forest, and those I grow in my own garden, and then infuse them into my micro batch creations. Fresh leaves, blossoms, buds, petals, bark, and roots of wild plants all find their way into my creations.
I pour my heart and soul into my craft.
I hope you feel that passion and purpose, along with the powerful healing magic of the forest every time you use something I’ve made. It's my way of helping you reconnect with the healing power of the wild world from your place on the planet.
RECONNECTING PEOPLE
At the very heart of my mission is reconnecting people to the wild world. I do this by infusing wild forest plants into my creations and sharing them with you. I hope that every time you use them you feel the love and power of the wild world.
HELPING OTHERS
I thrive on helping others. I get great personal satisfaction when you get good results with my creations. When you let me know you are happy, your skin's happy and you are feeling good using my products, it inspires me to continue learning and expanding my offering of unique, wild forest-infused creations to share with you.
NOURISHING TRADITIONS
The foundation from which I draw inspiration comes from the past - I strive to provide you with nourishing skin care traditions combined with natural products to help support and restore balance by reconciling our modern lifestyles with the needs of our skin.
MY TEAM
THE CONSULTANTS: I’m very fortunate to have two highly trained and skilled individuals (also friends) with whom I consult to create my products. One is a professional herbalist of 27 years, the other is a retired cosmetic chemist of 30 years. I receive guidance and knowledge from these generous, brilliant ladies to whom I am eternally grateful. I have attended numerous workshops and taken online courses in cosmetic chemistry and herbal skincare to continually improve my offerings.
MY HUSBAND: Jeff, is my foraging partner and enabler, he supports me in all my endeavors and always has my back! My best friend in life, we’ve been exploring and learning about our wild world, naturalism, and foraging together with our dogs for the last 20+ years here in Crested Butte, and counting.
MY STAFF: My boutique in Crested Butte is staffed with women, so my whole operations are maintained by women. They label and wrap my products, and manage the store for me so I can be in my workshop creating and foraging for the wild plants I’ll infuse into my creations.
Poodles in Paradise under the rainbow and the giant rock we live under LOL! That’s Pippin and Runa, while our Tessa dog is playing on the other side of that rainbow 💓
When I am not playing around in my lab or in connecting with customers in my boutique, you’ll find me outside exploring my backyard, gardening, and foraging for wild plants with my husband, Jeff, and our 2 beautiful poodles.
I've been reinventing myself my whole life. From corporate finance and banking to outdoor educator and wilderness mountain guide. I made and sold my artwork for 15 years. I am a self-taught naturalist, cosmetic chemist, entrepreneur, lifelong learner, creator, and productive member of my community.
In 1987, I earned a degree in finance and economics from the George Washington University in DC. I worked for a large bank in South Florida, then moved to NYC for a job in corporate finance. I went back to school for a degree in secondary education and taught business skills in adult education.
But something was amiss, I was anxious and depressed, and frankly found south Florida where I was raised to be more and more unappealing. I just could not stop thinking about the ski trips to the Rockies that my parents took us on when I was in college. I had taken up oil painting while working in public education and would stay up all night painting those mountains in my head.
I knew I had to EXPERIENCE LIFE in that landscape so in the later summer of 1991, I made my escape with just the “mountains of Colorado” as my destination, determined to carve out a new life for myself amongst soaring peaks.
I landed in Crested Butte quite by accident. It was love at first site. The mountains calmed me, escaping the insanity of the urban world breathed life back into my spirit and quieted my mind. The anxiety eased, the depression vanished, and I finally felt like a round peg in a round hole. My people are here, I knew I had found my place among the wildflowers, rainbows, magical forests, and woodland creatures.
I was captivated by the quietude of this magical place and have remained so to this very day. I began dabbling in the soaping and skin care arts and learning about the wild world while pursuing my other endeavors.
20 years later, in the summer of 2015, I launched Colorado Real Soap with a folding tabling, a stack of my Olive Oil soaps, a dozen jars of Paw Bliss, and a pop-up tent at the bustling Crested Butte Farmers Market. I sold out in 2 hours. I knew I’d just stepped onto yet another new path in life. I retired from the art show circuit and dove headlong into a new career at 49 with the goal of opening my store in my small town.
In May of 2017, I opened my boutique in Crested Butte inside of an art gallery which I outgrew in a few years. In June of 2021, I opened my store in downtown Crested Butte.
I rode off into the sunset that fateful day in 1991 and have carved out a beautiful life. I fell in love and married Jeff, a beautiful man who shares my love for places wild and outdoor adventures. For the past 20 years, we’ve climbed rocks and mountains, skied deep powder, rode the wild waves of rivers, learned to hunt and fish, and built a home. Together, we discovered wild food and medicinal plants and became avid amateur mycologists. I’ve become a self-taught herbalist so I can make medicine from the life-giving forest.
Jeff and I share our life with furry children who don’t stick around long enough, so we love them up while we have them with us, and then bid them farewell when it’s time for them to cross the rainbow bridge where they will be waiting for us to cross over someday too.