Grace's Blog

Meaning of the Fleur de Lis

2008-02-07T18:47:00.001-06:00

Using the Fleur de Lis as a symbol or logo for our store has prompted many questions from our customers, most of whom are Texans. Although, in Humble we do have our fair share of Katrina transplants (ourselves included). Since we have had so many requests to list the meaning of the beautiful symbol we did our homework and this is what we found:

The Fleur de Lis

The Fleur de Lis or Fleur de Lys means "flowers of the lily." This stylized lily has traditionally been used to represent French royalty. It signifies perfection, light and life. Legends differ on the origin of the fleur; some stories say that Clovis, the Metovingian king of the Franks was presented with a lily by an Angel, to represent purification, on his conversion to Christianity. Other tales tell that he adopted the symbol when waterlillies showed him how to safely cross a river, leading to a battle victory. The lily is also the emblem of the Virgin Mary, and some say the three petals of the fleur-de-lis represent the holy Trinity. While it has appeared on many city and state flags for years, it has become a symbol of rebirth and renewal in Louisiana since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.

That was the most comprehensive description of the Fleur de Lis or Fleur de Lys we found. However another description stated, "Although the word "Fleur de Lis or Fleur de Lys" actually means "flowers of the lily", this symbol is actually an artist's rendition of an iris in full bloom. If you look at the bloom of an iris it makes the shape of the Fleur de Lis.

Crabtree & Evelyn 50% off SALE

2008-01-31T11:18:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to post a quick message to let everyone know that we have all Crabtree & Evelyn Products on sale in the store and on the website. Any Crabtree & Evelyn Product we have is now at 50% off while supplies last. Anyone who knows anything about Crabtree and Evelyn will know that this is an amazing product. The fragrances are unbelieveable.

You can come into the store located at:

Grace's Unique Gift Boutique
19250 W. Lake Houston Pkwy., Suite J
Humble, TX 77346

or visit our website at:

http://www.gracesmoon.com

Wine Glace' now at Grace's

2008-01-23T12:53:00.000-06:00

Okay all of you wine lovers out there, we have something new that you are going to love.

We now have Wine Glace'. This is a very neat new product we found. Basically, you just add half of the bag of Wine Glace' with 12 ounces of your favorite wine and ice in a blender and it makes a WINE-A-RITA. How much fun is that?!? If you like Margarita's and you like wine, you will Love Wine Glace'.

You can check it out on our website: http://www.gracesmoon.com . You won't be sorry.

Happy New Year and Happy Mardi Gras

2008-01-14T16:29:00.000-06:00

Happy Mardi Gras
Well, I certainly hope everyone had a very nice holiday. It is now well past time to get back to work and we have hit the ground running. We have already sold out of most of our Mardi Gras decorations and we are expecting shipments of new items in any day now.

We are actively working on new candle fragrances and I can't wait to let everyone know what they are. You can check out our current candle selection at: http://www.gracesmoon.com . Just click on Esteem Home Fragrances to see what we have available. Keep in mind, we hand make every single candle and thus far they have gotten rave reviews.

Also on the website and in the store we have a big sale going on. We have all of our Crabtree & Evelyn products at 50% off, our Scent Shop reed diffusers are 25% off and the 20 oz. Orleans Candles are 25% off. You can see these on our website as well in the Specials section.

We look forward to seeing everyone in the store and for those of you who do not live close enough to come in, we sincerely thank you for your business and continued support.

Holidays at Grace’s Unique Gift Boutique

2007-11-01T14:13:00.000-05:00

Hi Everyone,

Whether we like it or not, in retail time, the holidays are here. Grace's is completely decorated for the holidays and believe it or not we have already sold out of some of our holiday decorations. We have designed some amazing trees for this year along with complimentary Garlands, swags and wreaths. There are some pictures on our website http://www.gracesmoon.com , but to get the full effect you must come into the store.

Along with the holiday decor we have also released some new Esteem Home Fragrances candles. We have 5 new fragrances: Pineapple Cilantro, Bird of Paradise, Milk & Honey, Fresh Brewed Coffee and Amaretto Spice. These new fragrances have been a huge hit thus far. Plus don't forget we have two great holiday fragrances as well: Holiday Spice and Christmas Tree.

We look forward to seeing everyone in the store as soon as possible.

A Preview of Grace's Unique Gift Boutique

2007-10-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

Holiday Decor at Grace's

2007-10-08T10:21:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to post a quick message to announce Holiday Decor at Grace's. Finally after much preparation and work we have our Holiday Decorations on display. This year we have some awesome designer trees displayed. We have created some great garlands and we even have some beautiful ornaments available for ornament exchange parties.

This year we are offering gift wrapping services. As always we will be offering complimentary gift wrapping for purchases made in store, however, we will allow you to bring packages purchased from other retailers and we will gift wrap them for a small fee.

We look forward to seeing you all in the store.

We are located at:

19250 W. Lake Houston Pkwy., Suite J.
Humble, TX 77346
281-913-1866
http://www.gracesmoon.com

This is at the intersection of W. Lake Houston Pkwy. and FM 1960 in the Kroger Shopping Center.

New at Grace's

2007-10-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

We have some new items up on the website for you to peruse. We have just added the Madison Avery line of sterling silver Fleur de Lis and Angel Jewelry. This is a must see for the holidays coming up. We have new necklaces, earrings, pins and tie pins. Check out the new jewelry at: http://www.gracesmoon.com .

Also we wanted to give everyone an update on the Esteem Home Fragrances Candles. If you haven't been keeping track, we make these candles by hand ourselves. So far they are doing very well. We most recently participated in a wonderful event with the Humble Area Chamber of Commerce. It was a Ladies Night Out held at the Humble Civic Center. We were a vendor and of course we displayed our Esteem Candles. They were a hit. We are gearing up to release 6 new fragrances: Amaretto Spice, Pineapple Cilantro, Bird of Paradise, Milk & Honey, Fresh Brewed Coffee and Vanilla. We are very excited about these new additions. Please keep a look out on the blog and the website to see when we release them. Check out the Esteem Home Fragrances on our website as well: Esteem Candles

It Just Keeps Getting Better

2007-08-22T12:45:00.001-05:00

Hello All,
The title of the post says it all. The store is doing well and believe it or not, it is time to display the Holiday Decor (Yikes!). It's seems so early, but thus is retail.

This little post is mainly about the Esteem Home Fragrances. In the last post I mentioned that a store in downtown Houston had picked them to sell. Reports are good from The Pretty Penny. The candles are doing great. Even better news...A Hallmark store in Galveston has picked up the entire line for the Fall and Holiday Season. This is a trail basis only, if they go over well they will keep them throughout the year. HOW EXCITING IS THAT?!?!

As ususal I am posting a link to our website so you can check out the new items and the candles. Grace's Unique Gift Boutique (www.gracesmoon.com)

Esteem Goes Wholesale ... How Exciting!

2007-08-10T11:21:00.000-05:00

Okay everyone, this is going to be a very quick post. I am so very excited to report that in 4 weeks we have sold well over 100 Esteem Candles. Above and beyond that, we have been contacted by 2 different stores, one in downtown Houston and another in Beaumont. The store downtown, The Pretty Penny, has already placed their first wholesale order with us. The other store (I will not mention yet), has taken testers to try in their stores. We are very very excited about this and hope all goes well to lead into a whole new line of business for us.

Thanks to everyone for the good thoughts and wishes.

Esteem Home Fragrances

2007-07-25T10:19:00.000-05:00

Okay the Esteem Candles are doing quite well in the store. I finally released them with 8 different fragrances. Pomegranate, Pearberry, Sandalwood, Sugar Cookie, Mediterranean Fig, Pomegranate & Sage, Powder Fresh and Texas Tea are the eight. I have already sold out of them once and have been forced to re-pour them in larger quantities . Of course my goal is to wholesale them to other stores like ours.

In the meantime we have decided to make Reed Diffusers as well (as if we have so much spare time). I have bee testing them for about a month now and the process is going great. We are simply searching for elegant containers for oil. I will of course keep everyone up-to-date when we release Esteem Reed Diffusers.

You can check out the Esteem Candles at our website: www.gracesmoon.com.

Until Next Time...

Introducing Esteem Home Fragrances

2007-07-06T12:27:00.000-05:00

Finally after several months of research and planning we have released Esteem Home Fragrances. They are very highly scented candles that we have been working on for quite some time now. We are very excited to have them available in our store and on our website. There are 8 different fragrances available. We plan to slowly add to our fragrance line and if things go well we could even add reed diffusers and other home fragrance delivery methods soon. We played "chemist" for a while and finally figured out how to make a candle that has 22% fragrance oil, which is arguably the highest percentage of fragrance oil used in the industry. A lot of hard work and passion has gone into making these candles and we are very proud to offer them to our customers.

In addition, we have decided to donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Esteem Candles to Animal Rescue Charities. So keep in mind that your purchases will benefit our Animal Friends as well.
I have also added some other items to our website. So you should definitely take a look around to see what you think. http://www.gracesmoon.com/ .

Renovations at the Store ... Busy, Busy, Busy

2007-06-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

If any of you came by the store over the past several days you found us closed for renovations. We were closed for 3 days in order to clean, paint and rearrange the store. We have only been open for 1 year but it was time to change the colors of the store and add some interest.

We painted the store a beautiful khaki color with light chocolate accents. We stenciled beautiful Fleur de Lis around the top above the crown moulding. We also refinished the Cash Wrap and Archway in a venitian plaster with an awesome antiqued brick red faux finish. It is an unbelievable transformation.

We did all of this work in 3 days with the help of some family and friends who were kind enough to lend their creativity and hard work to the process, and we can't say thank you enough.

If you live in the area, I encourage you to come by and see the finished product. If you are a website customer, just give me some time and I will have pictures on the site. Of course we are all very tired, but very pleased with the outcome.

By the Way, I will be pouring the very first "production" of Esteem Canldes on July 6. The time has almost come to present them at our store.

Candles Are Coming Soon . . .

2007-06-19T16:21:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone, I just wanted to post today to give you an update on our candle line. We have been testing and retesting to get the perfect fragrance line for our candles. We have finally poured our last test and we are ready to start production. The name of our candles are Esteem Home Fragrances. It just has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I will be posting soon with a list of fragrances that you can expect to see on our website soon.

As you very well may know, Esteem Home Fragrances is our new "additional" venture since Hurricane Katrina. In retrospect, I find it very interesting the way life changes because of such a horrible disaster. I can say with all honesty that the three of us would have never considered opening a home decor and gift shop pre-katrina and we certainly would have never considered a candle making venture.

I will be posting links soon to my other blog about Entrepreneurship. This blog is still under construction right now, but it will chronicle out journey as "forced" entrepreneurs in a post-katrina world. It should be quite interesting.

New Items on the Website

2007-05-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

Hi Folks,

Just a very quick post this morning. You know how Monday's are. I hope everyone's weekend went very well. Just wanted to let everyone know that we have New Items up on the website. Please check it out and let me know what you think. www.gracesmoon.com .

Post again soon,

Tim

About Grace's

2007-05-16T11:55:00.000-05:00

Hello All . . .

This post will hopefully introduce you to the people behind Grace's. First, we are all originally from St. Bernard Parish Louisiana and ended up in Humble Texas because of Hurricane Katrina. St. Bernard Parish was devastated by Katrina, we ended up with 14 feet of water at our home and of course lost everything. However, despite this tragedy we are very grateful to be where we are today. The people of Texas have embraced us and supported us in our efforts to rebuild our lives here.

There are three of us who own Grace's Unique Gift Boutique and surprisingly enough we didn't own a gift and home decor shop in Louisiana. We all three had different careers, one a counselor, one a personal banker and the other a computer technician. It seemed an exciting idea, since we had to start life over that we should start with a new career that we thoroughly enjoyed. Grace's was formed and we have worked diligently to offer our new community quality products at very affordable prices.

Probably the number one question we are asked is "who is Grace?". Grace's was named after our dog. Her name is Gracie. She is a beautiful buff cockerspaniel. We all love animals and wanted to make sure we incorporated our pets in our store.

Now you know who we are, let us know about you. Leave your comments to this post and let us know about you and by all means give us your opinion about our website and our store (if you have been in to visit us.)

We look forward to hearing from all of you!

Happy Mother's Day

2007-05-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

Mother's Day is here. It is a time for us to reflect on everything our Mothers are to us everyday. I find it a little sad that most of us wait until this one day each year to appreciate our Moms. However, I am proud to see so many people coming into the store and logging on to our website to buy their Mothers something special on this day.

As many of you know, my Mother and Grandmother passed away in August of 2005 but I still honor them everyday of my life and I try to do something extra special on Mother's Day in their memory.

This Mother's Day Eric, Sean and I have volunteered to help out a friend of ours who owns Roma's Cucina Italiana. She is a little short handed this year and we have volunteer to be servers, bartenders, bus boys or anything else she needs us to do. I feel like my Mom and Grandmother would be proud of us for helping out a friend.

If you don't have any plans for Mother's Day, please come spend it with us at Roma's Cucina Italiana. It is located at the intersection of W. Lake Houston Parkway and Upper Lake in Atascocita. Reservations are NOT required.

Handmade Candles

2007-05-10T13:34:00.000-05:00

Okay, the first test of the handmade candles has been a complete success. We made two different scents. I poured only 5 candles of each scent as a test. We placed a tester of the candles on our Candle Warmer in the store and we have already sold out of both scents. We will be introducing some new special scents and candles soon so stay tuned!

New Merchandise in the Store

2007-04-29T13:13:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we have just rearranged the store for Mother's Day. If has a new look and a bunch of new products. I have added some of the new products to the website. Click here to check out the website. We have added some beautiful new artwork and some new jewelry to the store. Also there are some new candle fragrances on the horizon (I am making them myself). I promise they will be GREAT. I will let you know when they are ready.

Orleans Candles Unbelievable Scents

2007-04-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

Hi,

This is the first post for me. I am very new to blogging so please bear with me. This is one of the new blogs for our store. Let me give you a little background. We opened Grace's Unique Gift Boutique on April 17, 2006 (just celebrated our one year anniversary). We are originally from New Orleans and were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. We have now chosen to settle in the Humble Texas area. We didn't have a retail store or an online store before the Hurricane. We decided to do something different and we opened Grace's (named after our cocker spaniel Gracie). We are located at: 19250 W. Lake Houston Pkwy., Ste J., Humble, TX. Our website address is: http://www.gracesmoon.com . We are very excited to have been open for a year and can't wait to meet all of you (whether in person or via our website/blog).

One of the first items we would like to introduce to you is our Orleans Home Fragrance candles. These are unbelieveably scented candles that I am sure you will like. Please visit our website to check out the different fragrances. I invite you to respond with reviews on the scents on this blog and on our website (we have a reviews section for our products). We are very interested to know what you think.

We hope to hear from all of you soon.

Tim