TranDunn Trading

My wife Alice and I got married in 2007. As we first learned to live together, I found that Alice had many practical ideas that I had never considered before. Where Alice is the great organizer, I'm Mr. Entropy. Where Alice has the gift of multiple languages, I am the master of one: English. And so it is that I offer an interesting tale, the tale of TranDunn Trading.

Within the first few months of living together, I found some very interesting surprises in Alice. For example, one day, I showed her my sushi rolling kit. I said, "Wait till I get home and we can make avocado roll together." When I got home, she had made enough to feed several people comfortably. At that point, I became reacquainted with wasabi.

When we were preparing to move to Utah, I was still working and asked Alice to pack all the small stuff and leave the big furniture to me and I will break it down. She had it all packed by the time I got home. When we moved from an apartment into our first home, I asked Alice to wait until I got home so that we could put it together, together. Again, she had all of our Ikea furniture put back together.

I began to notice small things she did that seemed novel. One day, she took a lemon, squeezed the juice into a small bowl and put the bowl in our microwave. After about a half minute of cooking, she took the bowl out, dipped a paper towel in the bowel and proceeded to clean the microwave with hot lemon juice.

Then I began to notice lime halves on the rim of the bathtub. The lime halves were squeezed and turned inside out. I asked her about them and learned that she was using limes as a natural deodorant. I then saw her one day using a lime halve to wash her face. I was so intrigued that I tried it myself. The oils in the lime were a natural moisturizer and my skin felt great after rinsing.

When our baby Emily was born, she was fine, but around the second month, we began to notice she was scratching a lot and that turned out to be eczema. We tried many things to help her. One item that seemed to help a great deal was lanolin. It worked so well, that Alice began to research lanolin products and came up with her own, TranLan. One very interesting note is that when we stopped using milk-based formula, the eczema went away - a note for baby number 2.

TranLan didn't just help Emily with her skin, it has helped me with my dry, cracked heels. The lanolin sticks to the skin and seals it up, locking in moisture. When it dries, there is no smell, no residue. TranLan helped to soften my heel so that when I scrub my heel with a pumice stone, most of the dead skin falls away, leaving me with a smoother heel with no cracks. Since I started using TranLan, I've been pain free on my heels, even when I wear sandals in the summer. I have even found that TranLan works on the hands, healing cracked cuticles and moisturizing the web between my thumb and index finger.

Alice has also created a lip balm called CocoTran. I've used it myself to find that my cracked lips heal up in a day or overnight with just one application. It has a nice kind of coconut smell and goes on smooth. Instead of putting it in a tube like most lip balms, she packs it in a nice metal tray with a sliding top. Then it's easy to get to the last spot of balm in the tray. The tray dispenser ensures that there is no waste and you get all of what you paid for.

Alice created these products with simple ingredients that are easy to pronounce. They are made with care, by hand. I have helped with the website, email and the labels, but she does the rest, in the kitchen, when Emily is sleeping. Alice sources her own materials and checks them out. She researches the containers and the methods of putting everything together into a nice, neat little product.

If you have dry, chapped lips, or dry cracked heels, give our products a try. You might find that they work well for you. If do you do decide to try them out, please give us feedback. We love feedback. :) You can reach Alice at alice@trandunntrading.com and me by posting a comment to this blog.