We are thoroughly enjoying days and days of glorious sunshine here in County Wicklow at the moment and all hoping that it is here to stay. With the beautiful, sometimes cloudless blue skies and the radiant sunshine everybody appears to have a spring in their step!! And that includes Sharon, Claire and Leeanne here in our office,who have recently taken to spending their daily lunch breaks walking around the scenic Rocky Valley area, here near Kilmacanogue! Beautiful weather to appreciate such wonderful scenery and at the same time getting fit and healthy. Keep up the good work girls!!!

On a more serious note, we have just had a Customer Service strategy review and update this morning. All geared of course to going that extra mile for you our customer and to let you know how much we appreciate your support. We are all very aware of the importance of customer satisfaction and as a team, we are committed to continuing to provide a first class service to you. If you have any issues or would just like to express your opinion, or make a suggestion, on the service we offer, please send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   and we will be delighted to hear from you.

We have started a big painting job here in Fragrances of Ireland. Our whole building is getting a face lift and what better colours to paint it in, other than our very own Inis blue and white!! Rodz is busy painting at the moment but when the job is nearer to completion we will have some images to show you. Take a look at the one below - this is our premises covered in snow in the recent heavy snowfall which took Ireland by surprise!

We are also getting ready here for our annual Lavender Yard Sale which will take place on Sat & Sun 10th & 11th of July next. Preparations are in the pipeline and we hope that it will be bigger and better this year. With our Lavender Harvest as the theme, customers will have the opportunity to purchase freshly cut bunches of lavender and bottles of our locally distilled lavender essential oil, along with a range of Sweet Lavender scented products which contain some of the lavender oil distilled at Kilmacanogue every July. Other Product ranges which will be available include fragrances, vegetable oil soaps, lotions, hand creams and shower gels. So watch this space for further details coming soon...!

So Barbara finally got home from Secaucus, New Jersey despite the ash-laden skies and following a very successful trade-show for Fragrances! Thankfully air traffic seems to be slowly returning to normal after so many people's travel plans all round the world had been foiled by the volcano in Iceland last week

While Barbara took to the skies, Carole our rep was doing her usual drive around Ireland to meet with and update our irish customers. Log on to our facebook page (click on 'f' logo at end of page to access our profile) to see the wonderful images of our rep's travels, especially the most recent one which is also here below - the grey heron bird getting a lift in Galway!!! Wonder where he was off to??

So we are all taking about the same subject all over the world at the moment. That is the ash from the Icelandic Volcano which has managed to stop air travel around the globe. Who would have ever thought??

We were all a little worried for Barbara at end of last week as she was travelling to the Secaucus Trade Show in New Jersey last Friday but fortunately for her, her flight was finally able to take off, despite several flights to the US being cancelled. Now the worry is that she will get back today as planned! Fingers crossed that she will but it appears that things are a little better now!

Here in Fragrances we are avid coffee drinkers!!! Especially David, Doug and Fiona and so you can imagine the withdrawal symptoms setting in when we found that we had run out of our filtered coffee and that our particular brand of coffee was out of stock at the wholesalers!! We had to live on instant coffee for a few days before we got re-stocked with our favourite brand! Tragic few days for all concerned!!!

What more can one ask for but sunny blue skies?? Enough to put even the grumpiest person in good form! We've had lots of sunshine for a few days now and hopefully it will last a lot, lot longer.

We've had a busy week here in Fragrances getting ready for the Xpose Live show in the RDS. It was a great event with plenty of fashion, beauty, jewellery, make up stands etc. The Fashion Show was really good and showcased the current trend in summer fashion. The 'Pamper Me' zone full  of spa treatments and the like for those who felt they needed an instant pick me up!

Stacey Solomon from X Factor fame also performed some of her songs from the show and we were so delighted that she visited the Fragrances of Ireland stand and took home some of our CARU and Inis fragrances to sample!! We hope you like them Stacey!!!

Our Haiti fundraiser will be coming to an end tomorrow, March 31st. We would like to say thank you to all of you who have supported this very worthwhile appeal by ordering our products on-line and thus enabling us to donate $1 from every order to this very public and urgent cause. Hopefully our contribution to the charity Haven, who are doing tremendous work in Haiti, will help in some small way to making life a little easier for the Haitian people following the recent tragic disaster to hit their country.

This Wednesday everyone in Fragrances of Ireland will be in Easter mode. We are having our Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Lots of laughs and lots of chocolate to be found, so what more could we want!! While David/Doug are busy thinking up clues and finding hiding places for the eggs (not sure how they are going to manage that because at this stage practically every corner of our premises has been used up over the years!!!) we are all busy trying to be a few steps ahead by guessing where we think the eggs might be hid. So roll on Wednesday - plenty of fun - and plenty of chocolate!!

On another Easter note - As subscribers to our website you will probably have received our Easter Special Offer newsletter by now. Get our Farmhouse Lemonade EdT FREE if you place an order over €40/£40/$50 up to 5^th April and while stocks last. For those of you who are not subscribers but would like be included in our newsletters and thus giving you the option of taking up our Special Offers and being kept up to date on our products please send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   and we will automatically add you to our list.

All back safe and sound from QVC! While we here in Ireland were celebrating St. Patrick's Day steeped in glorious sunshine and mild temperatures (for a change!) Barbara was presenting and selling our products on the St. Patrick's Day Special Celebration on QVC. As usual she did a great job and sold a huge amount of our fragrances. Our MD, David, also made a previously unplanned appearance on-screen to successfully sell out on our Inis Arose EDP. So well done to both of you!!

This has been an exciting week for Fragrances of Ireland.Barbara has been getting ready to head to the US to represent Fragrances of Ireland on American TV Channel QVC on St. Patrick's Day. QVC do an 'Irish' day on 17th March each year. (To see Barbara live tomorrow log on to www.qvc.com). Barbara has appeared on the show for a number of years now but every year is as exciting as the last. From selling old favourites like Inis, to promoting new products it's always exciting to see how our different ranges are accepted by our customers in the US. Hopefully this time round we will do just as well. Barbara - just to say good luck and best wishes from all the team here in Fragrances!!

Well we can't complain at the moment, sunny skies and not a cloud to be seen, Wicklow is bathed in Spring sunshine and we are all happy, happy, happy!

The photo attached is of Bálint, a Hungarian tourist who met David our MD on the Sugarloaf last week and who kindly obliged by taking the photo of David with his bottle of Inis for our Facebook promotion. Just to say a big hello and a big thank you for all your help and hope you enjoyed your trip to Ireland.

As a thank you to our loyal customers, and as we are approaching our National Holiday – St. Patrick’s Day – we are offering you the opportunity to order on line and get FREE shipping along with a little piece Ireland contained in our special free gift of our Heather and Moss vegetable oil soap. So hurry and get your order in before midnight on St. Patrick's Day to avail of this great promotion. Enjoy.....

O Happy Days!!! Second day of sunshine here in Countyw Wicklow. Do we dare think the season is changing at last? There are definite signs around. Take a look at the shot below of the yellow gorse finally beginning to bloom on the Little Sugarloaf this morning. The world is definitely a brighter place when the skies are blue and the flowers are in bloom.

Of course another reason to be happy is Ireland's victory against England in the RBS 6 Nations Cup match last Saturday in Twickenham!! We've analysed the match inside out in here and all agree it was a super game and a well deserved win. Special congrats to winger Tommy Bowe as he scored two tries, the decisive one five minutes from time, to give Ireland the winning score.

We're getting ready for Christmas 2010 at the moment!! Yes I am sure you are wondering what that means given that we have just left one Christmas behind. Generally at this time of year we have to look towards what we are going to offer our customers for the following Christmas in terms of gift sets, fragrances etc. Barbara puts all her ideas & suggestions together on packaging, items etc and presents them to the team. Then each idea is vigorously discussed and finally decided upon. So already, hard to believe it, but yes we are currently in the process of getting ready for next Christmas!!!

We have also just launched a new promotion on Facebook. Why not log on to get details of our "Where in the World is Inis" competition. It's a lot of fun with good prizes and discounts - and worth having a look at our MD trekking up Little Sugarloaf to photograph his bottle of Inis believe me it is not the normal business attire in Fragrances!!