New Products!

After quite a long and slow summer, we have begun restocking our shop for the colder months and will continue to restock until the winter holidays!

We have restocked old favorites, such as Nectar Republic Apothecary Candles and White Sage Smudges and their best-selling winter holiday scent, Mistletoe.

From Maryland, we have discovered delectable chocolate covered caramels from Chouquette. Their flower designs are a perfect addition to our shop. Also very exciting — Popette of Pendulum lollipops are a new discovery. They specialize in deluxe vegan hard candy with no known allergens. Made in a peanut-free, tree nut-free and gluten-free facility —this is our new favorite lolly.

Sardine Clothing in Philly has the most adorable upcycled cashmere accessories! We have restocked their popular fingerless gloves, which are like candy.

We have also hundreds of glass animals back in the store! Local kids have been coming in and adding to their menageries. (The birds are super popular, but so are the bugs.)

Stay tuned, as in the next 8 weeks we will be unpacking our shipments and making room on the shelves for new items!

And of course, we now offer Seltzer Goods in shop — their tote bags and stickers have been a huge hit! All of our VOTE 2020 items are now on sale. Mention that you are voting for a 20% discount on tote bags and 10% off stickers and face masks. PLAN YOUR VOTE and make your voice heard.

The Moon Hat

We have officially heard that anything with the NASA logo is played out for the next fifty years, or at least until humans land on Mars. Thankfully, we have got your heads covered!

Upper Village Blooms is proud to now carry the Moon Hat!

The Moon Hat, by Croton’s own Dan Cummings, is a remarkable science teaching aid as well as fashionable headgear.

In both beanie and baseball cap, crisp and bright embroidered moon phases wrap around the head. Each image is placed to create a precise 360˚ model of the Moon's orbit around the Earth. It’s both beautiful and functional.

The Moon Hat comes with instructions sewn inside so you'll always know the moon phase names, which order they go in so you can orient yourself to the moon’s location.

Forbes named the Moon Hat “Best Science Gift of 2018”! And this year, with the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, it will be an even more timely gift for your favorite budding astronaut or rocket designer. For adults and kids alike, the fleece cap is stretchy and warm, and the baseball hat is distinctively sharp looking

Remember, it is good to be curious!

Follow Dan’s Blog at Star in a Star. Star In A Star was founded to improve early astronomy education by anchoring it in the physical world of people, objects, and places.

Vanessa's Tomato Jam!

Upper Village Blooms is very excited to announce that we now carry Vanessa’s Tomato Jam! We are especially proud to announced that this is Made in Croton!

Out of desperation, Vanessa Sudnik began making her Tomato Jam in order to use up all of the end-of-season fruit in her husband’s home garden.

This delightful concoction can be described as an American chutney —it is lighter in body with a perfectly balanced flavor. Vanessa’s Tomato Jam pairs well with stinky, washed-rind cheeses like taleggio, but it’s also delicious served with tangy cheddar. Substitute it for sweet chili paste in recipes, serve it on lamb, pork, poultry and beef, and it takes any potato —roasted, mashed, fried— to the next level! It dresses up grilled cheese sandwiches as well as turkey like you wouldn’t believe.

It will be your new favorite addition to your charcuterie board or sandwich.

$13.99 for an 8 oz jar

Stop by Second Mouse Cheese Shop in Pleasantville for accompanying delicious cheeses and charcuterie!

NY Now Gift Show

Twice a year, the NY Now Retail Renaissance gift show visits the Javits Center, giving retailers opportunities to see over 2,300 brands of products. Home decor, bath and beauty products, stationery, accessories, jewelry, and specialty food items are featured from all around the world. It is a convenient way for us to browse new brands, sample items, and reconnect with our established vendors.

This week, we walked many miles for several days, winding through the vast array of products, trying to avoid collecting too many heavy catalogs and failing.

We sniffed more lines of candles and home fragrance diffusers than we can remember and sampled so many hand lotions, body creams, and balms that we we’ve been light-headed and shiny for days. Oh, the things we suffer through!

Now that we are back, we are poring over catalogs, calculating minimum order prices and wishing we had a million dollars so we could bring all these fabulous products we found to Croton!

Here are only two dozen of the pictures we snapped!

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Little Light Pottery

Orit Daly —a Croton-on-Hudson potter— introduced herself to us last year, correctly thinking we’d be in love with her line of botanical pottery. She takes plants in various stages (and seasons) and then imprints them in her art. Obviously Upper Village Blooms was smitten with this idea! 

After spending some time together with Orit, we realized we had a lot in common. Specifically, we love plants and flowers and we ❤️ Croton!

We commissioned her to create bespoke art celebrating the natural beauty of Croton. After agreeing, she then asked —What if we make something useful as well? 

A fruitful and creatively collaborative partnership was born!

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We now present our Riverwalk Collection, three designs of our beloved Croton Landing, available in mugs and trivets. The trivets can be used practically, and when not in use it hangs on the wall. 

Orit’s line drawings of the Riverwalk capture the stark beauty of the Hudson River in winter. The slats of the walkway, curves of the path winding along the riverbank, and the graphic beauty of nature all represent our particular claim to the Hudson. 

The method in which Orit captures her art on our mugs and trivets is called the Mishima Technique. It originated in East Asia in 9th century Korea, then it travelled to Japan where it got its name. This method of incising and inking images before the glaze is applied perfectly evokes the linear aspects of Riverwalk in winter, with narrow-leaved cattails, reeds, willows, oaks, and the Palisades.

Stop into Upper Village Blooms and admire Orit Daly’s work, then have a lovely stroll on our Riverwalk!

Orit Daly from Little Light Pottery presents her Riverwalk Collection exclusively at Upper Village Blooms.

Little Light Pottery
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Getting ready for Valentine's Day Part 1

We have been busy over here, getting ready for our first Valentine’s Day!

Despite the snowstorm, we received a giant shipment of TokyoMilk products. We re-stocked some favorites and ordered a few new scents, such as La Vie La Mort and Honey & the Moon. We added Pretty Rotten perfume and Kabuki Shea Butter Hand Creme. We are grateful that we had the chance to put this out in time for Valentine’s Day.

Our Bath & Body wall, includes TokyoMilk, Root, Branch & Blossom, Lovewild Design.

TokyoMilk Date Night. Includes Dead Sexy #06 Eau de Parfum and Lip Gloss packaged set in a luscious tin. Extremely limited stock.

Silken Body, Silken Lips

It's perfectly easy to begrudge St. Valentine's Day, which is based on Valentine of Rome, who was martyred in 269 CE. He is the patron saint of beekeepers, happy marriages, affianced couples, and against fainting. 

Since we opened, we have proudly stocked Root, Branch & Blossom's all-natural and effective personal care products, such as Silken Lips, All-Clean Hands, and Slumber Salts. For this Valentine's Week only, we are pleased to offer a thoughtfully-curated special.

Exclusively at Upper Village Blooms is the Love is in Blooms Bundle! This includes Silken Lips, Silken Body, and the ever-popular Slumber Salts. At $24.50, this is a perfect gift for your Valentine. It also is a spectacular savings, with $7 off the retail price! 💗
It’s like getting Slumber Salts for nearly free!

Silken Body, Root, Branch & Blossom’s signature Skin Smoothing Oil, is a coconut/safflower oil based blend with a subtle scent that includes lemon peel. geranium, lavender and rose absolute. This is a light weight oil that offers a smooth glide for post-shower or massage that melts into the skin. We are offering it at $19 for this Valentine’s Day, or $5 off regular retail price.

Root, Branch & Blossom is one of the main lines of Attract Essentials, the creator of Intention-Based Aromatherapy™. We are so pleased to be one of their retail partners.

http://attractessentials.com/

@attractessentials

If you like nice smells and impeccable design...

Skeem Design is a husband/wife team who creates stunningly designed gift items for the home. 

They combine quality scents with gorgeous design, and to further this brilliance, they design to eliminate unnecessary packaging.

Field Jar Candles and Vintage Matches

Most of their containers are easily reusable.  They have a sensual way with scents —just sample their strong Arabica Coffee Field Jar candles or Palo Santo soap. Their soy-based candles and match bottles are “hand-made in small batches in the USA”.

Here, we feature selections from their Talisman collection, which is based upon the legendary Four Thieves blend. Here’s the quick story:

Six or seven-hundred years ago during the Bubonic Plague, four thieves stole the possessions from the myriad dead. Legend claims they stayed alive and avoided the Black Death because of a special blend of essential oils in vinegar. The recipe for vinaigre des quatre voleurs was known as:

Take three pints of strong white wine vinegar, add a handful of each of wormwood, meadowsweet, wild marjoram and sage, fifty cloves, two ounces of campanula roots, two ounces of angelic, rosemary and horehound and three large measures of champhor. Place the mixture in a container for fifteen days, strain and express then bottle. Use by rubbing it on the hands, ears and temples from time to time when approaching a plague victim.

Rene-Maurice Gattefosse, Gattefosse’s Aromatherapy (CW Daniel Company, Ltd. First published in Paris, France in 1937 by Girardot & Cie.), 85-86.

There are as many different recipes for this blend as there are variations of the story, but the effectiveness of the blend is due to the anti-microbial properties of essential oils.

We offer the Talisman essential oil roller ball and soy-candle. Use the roller ball to combat fatigue, as a mnemonic aid for studying, or simply to transport your senses to a calmer place. Pair the candle with the astronomy matches and you have a lovely gift to give someone.

Skeem Design’s Talisman Collection with Astronomy Matches.

#skeemdesign

For more information on the properties of essential oils, try the

National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy

Painted Tongue Press

Upper Village Blooms offers an exclusive selection of greeting cards that is unlike anything you’ll find in these hinterlands of NYC, and we take pride in it. It’s eclectic, sometimes irreverent, polite, and always tasteful.

Painted Tongue Press immediately caught our eye with their letterpress botanical cards. They are pressed on creamy, substantial paper and colored delicately. Unlike anything we’ve seen though, Painted Tongue Press cards are pressed on both the front and back.

We got excited over some gorgeous floral-themed cards and then saw the envelopes! Most people do not notice envelopes, those hard-working postal messengers, but you cannot help admire these. And so will the lucky person receiving them. 

Use them for absolutely any occasion and they will convey how much you care. They are the anti-thesis of a text message. Or a blog post.

Painted Tongue Press

Oakland, CA

Callifornia Poppies and Queen Anne’s Lace

We left the protective film on these cards, hence the shininess.