Hi everyone,
So, I didn’t make a Monday Musing, maybe it’ll be Tuesday Twittering? Or may even get to a Wednesday Wondering? (Actually – this was last week – it’s now Monday again!) Life is just so damn busy.
It shouldn’t be. It’s not good for our health, physical or mental. We need to slow down. Easy said though, isn’t it?
I thought I’d tell you about where the name Eve actually came from - as a few of you assume that’s my name.
Tayla had been working a night shift in aged care. It was her birthday. I had been out to breakfast with her and my parents. She had been talking about watching all these YouTube channels on homesteading – she loves cooking and gardening. I started thinking about her passion and then my own. What if we could make a business out of what we love? (More about Tayla’s side of the business later – but by the time she woke up I had registered a business called The Eve Collective).
I’m not saying I have always loved skincare – but my interest in making things simple, slowing down, researching ingredients to make sure we are not poisoning ourselves further has been a bit of an obsession.
I’m also a bit of a fix-it person. Got a problem? I’ll research the crap out of it and find a way to fix it. That is where Eve started – watching my husband Kyle layer steroid cream on his inflamed psoriasis. Watching Tayla flake all over the place with her own battles with psoriasis and Georgia irritable with her eczema flare ups. Surely there was a better way - enter SOOTHE!
When Tayla, Georgia and I started building this business, I really wanted the name to mean something to all three of us. I didn’t want to just slap our names together. Nothing really worked.
I wanted something that belonged to us. Then she came to me.
Eve.
My mum is Lynette Eve. My great-grandmother was Evelyn. There was a Great Aunt Evie. And who knows how many Eves, Evies, or Evelyns came before them.
Our ancestors.
Somehow that feels very fitting when the ingredient at the centre of what we do is tallow – something ancestral. People have been cooking with it, making all sorts of things with it for millennia. It all fits – naturally!
The photo I’ve included is my great-grandmother, Evelyn.
She cooked with tallow all the time. I doubt she was standing there thinking about fatty acid profiles or skin barrier support, but Mum remembers her own mother rubbing tallow into her hands while she was cooking with it.
Nothing fancy.
It was just there.
And now, a few generations later, her great-granddaughter and great-great-granddaughters are rendering kilos and kilos of the stuff and turning it into skincare.
I really love that. I also love that I get to build this with my girls.
Of course we annoy each other. We have different ideas. Sometimes I become obsessed with a new ingredient and start sending everyone messages about it at stupid hours. (Sea buckthorn. It’s here… Nearly).
But underneath all of that, I really do hope we're building something that lasts.
Something the three of us can look back on and say; We made that. Together.
So that's Eve.
Not a clever brand name.
Just ours.
And I think Evelyn would get a bit of a kick out of seeing what we're doing with all that tallow.
Tammy x
P.S. Sea Buckthorn Serum and Tallow will be here very soon – check our socials for updates.
Also here is the link to my last email to you all (in case you missed it)