My best childhood friend and I both grew up in divorced families that are now hyper-extended and brimming with step and half members. As adults, these connections grow even more complex. New marriages and children make our family trees look like mangroves. Mostly, this is a blessing, but it can make the holidays awfully tricky. And expensive.

A few years ago, we decided to combine our resources and make all of our holiday gifts together. As fans of luxurious bath products, we created several of our own – mostly bath bombs and salts. We dove into aromatherapy research, scoured online wholesale supply stores and experimented like madwomen in her basement. We called our line “Bathquake,” and we made great product with fun titles and labels with whimsical descriptions.

Family members were so supportive of our Christmas gift efforts that we considered becoming a real company. We geared up for Valentine’s Day by creating several new formulas with frisky titles and got some of our friends hooked. Happily, one of my addicted friends was a massage therapist who was always willing to defray her fee when I brought a few things for her.

Sadly, neither my friend or I liked sales nearly as much as we liked making the stuff, and although we tried in vain to find someone who could tow that line for us, we relegated our product back to gifts for family and friends. I include it here because I wrote some fun product copy in the process. Reading it still makes me want to take a bath.