Our Story

How We Got Here


Hey folks! Here to learn a bit about us, eh? Well voilà — here you are, here we are, all of us just… being in the be-here-now.

We’re Ella and Bryan Hauwiller from Portland, Oregon, creators of Dirty Dandelion Soap. That’s us up there with our dogs — Ernie (small-fluffer-lap-man) and Ollie (anxious-obedient-lick-taster).

Dirty Dandelion started in the early days of the 2020 pandemic, when handwashing was on the rise, job security was… not (Bry got laid off, I was at the hospital stressing without proper PPE), and we thought: What if we became Dr. Bronner? But, you know, with fewer existential rambles about “All-One-God-Faith” and more “That-makes-me-laugh-in-the-shower-but-still-gives-me-beauty-and-bubbles” energy.

Fast-forward through years of experimentation, gathering know-how, and fits of creative chaos, we slow-launched our soaps in Fall 2023. Because, honestly, who has time to speed-launch a hobby-slash-business when there’s so much else to do?

Life and Other Things

When we’re home, you’ll find us:

  • Hanging with the chickens and the worms in the garden; they're so distractingly cute!
  • Taking the dogs to the 1000-acre dog park (also so freaking cute)
  • Buying plants without asking, "where will this even go?"
  • Planting seeds too close together
  • Remodeling the house to 90% completion
  • Moving laundry piles around to make us feel like we've done some laundry
  • Playing with clay and soldering stained glass
  • Inventing increasingly absurd nicknames for each other (current roster includes: Loushalite, Frankenstein Head, Penelope Sway-bash, John Buckle-Heart, Butterscotch Pompis, and Bryan’s reluctant alter-ego, “Big Teddy”)

We’re often in the soap lab wondering: New plant-based colorant? New mold? Should we make soaps shaped like Sasquatch? Rocks? That weird tomato we just grew? And before you know it, we’re tie-dyeing with indigo, dreaming of basket weaving, or debating whether it’s finally time to go vegan (not quite yet, sorry cows).

Life’s messy. Soap helps!

   

We also love hiking and foraging for mushrooms (chanterelle, matsutake, morel), learning languages, making music, traveling, reading books (or listening while moving laundry piles out of sight), geeking out over biology and neuroscience, and of course we bring it back to the good old-fashioned chemistry that is soap-making.

(Now for all the dudes out there who have a burning desire to ask about fight club, just pause for the cause, friends, because you know that if we did, we couldn't talk about it anyway).

Our favorite place to unwind? The clawfoot tub in our backyard bathhouse, affectionately called Big Teddy’s Place. We may soon have to name a soap, Tubbin' with Teddy, because... silliness. 

By day, we’re a hospital-based speech-language pathologist (Ella) and a product manager (Bryan), with the far-off goal of being full-time soap-makers.

.. 

It’s a true family affair here at Dirty Dandelion Soap, and we’re happy to have you along.

All our labels come from original watercolor paintings by my (Ella's) mom, Sally, in Newport, Oregon. Her prints are available for purchase by special request. Sally calims she has "no natural talent" -just thousands of hours of practice - but the truth is, she's become a master of color, depth, and detail.  

Quick story: back in the late aughts, my sister Lorraine had just started her MFA in sculpture at Yale (I know, so fancy, don’t get me started), while my mom, Sally, had just picked up watercolor painting.

This was after she’d already been a jazz singer, rocking chair builder, piano teacher, choir director, child-rearer, massage therapist, fruit stand owner, tincture formulator, headbanger, and health-food enthusiast. Painting had been a pastime of my great-great-grandfather, who traveled the US painting people, boats, and mountains. For Sally, it became a meditative way to pay close attention to the world around her as well.

At first, when flowers started looking like flowers and boats like boats, she proudly mailed us paintings. My stash grew… but let’s be honest, not all made it onto the walls (sorry mum). Lorraine shared the same conundrum away at school, so under other works and in corners the original watercolor trials remained.

Meanwhile, Lorraine’s MFA critiques were famously intense — every artistic choice questioned: Why this? What’s the cultural significance? Did you know you were thinking about phenomenology? In this mindset, she looked at one of my mom’s early florals and delivered a perfect, understated critique:

“Painting is hard.”

We still laugh about it. Painting is hard. But Sally’s mix of good humor and quiet competitiveness (she’s a high school breaststroke record holder and self-proclaimed ping-pong shark) kept her going. Years later, we — and now you — get to enjoy the fruits of her persistence, as her art and a few of Lorraine's pieces, grace every bar of Dirty Dandelion Soap.

The truth is, if it weren’t for Mom’s inspiration, colors, and "painting is hard" grit, Dirty Dandelion Soap might have faded away with the sourdough starters and banana bread of 2020. Now her art wraps our bars like love letters from the Oregon coast. They're so nice, you almost forget they’re made by people who can’t stop getting distracted by chickens.

Thanks, Mom. 

That's all for now! Signing off!

With Love,
Ella and Bryan Hauwiller