"I'm also doing this as a way to celebrate my clients. I have many loyal clients, and they're as much a part of this as I am," she says with an appreciative smile.

What keeps those clients coming back is as varied as the menu of services available at Chez Aubrey, which includes several types of facials; partial and full-body massages; customized aromatherapy; paraffin hand treatments; body waxings; sunless tanning; personal make-up lessons and applications; reiki treatments; and even hypnotherapy.

While Smith does employ a few practitioners of these various techniques, she also does much of the work herself, being a licensed aesthetician, certified massage therapist and graduate of Santa Rosa's Alchemy Institute of Healing Arts, where she trained to become a hypnotherapist.

Smith, now 34, says she didn't always know she'd be in the day spa business, but she suspected early on that her destiny was to help people. "When I was a little kid, my dad used to tell me, 'You have such strong hands; you're going to be a chiropractor someday!' " she recalls.

Although she liked the idea of being a healer, she eventually decided against it, as it was a bit too "clinical" for her taste, she says. A graduate of UC-Santa Cruz with a bachelor's degree in literature, Smith says she got on the path that led to Chez Aubrey while studying abroad in France, where she lived with a family that ran a pharmacy.

"If you took an American drugstore and combined it with make-up and aromatherapy, that's what their pharmacy was like," says Smith, who found that combination very inspiring; she felt likewise about the peaceful, fragrant French countryside and wanted to bring those same feelings back to the States.

For a time, Smith worked for a chiropractor, doing scalp, neck and shoulder massages. She says she noticed she felt very energized afterwards and decided to learn more about the discipline. This led to her massage therapist and aromatherapist certifications from Twin Lakes College of the Healing Arts in Santa Cruz.

She opened her first day spa on Saratoga Avenue in March 1995: "That was my 27th birthday present to myself!" she says with a grin. She later moved to De Anza Boulevard in Cupertino and then, in March 1999, to Royce, an unassuming side street in downtown Los Gatos. She also holds evening classes in aromatherapy there.

"This was my dream location. I always thought that someday this was where I was going to be," says Smith, a Scotts Valley resident. "After coming here for treatments, not everyone wants to walk out onto a busy street like N. Santa Cruz Avenue, so this is a perfect location for us."

"I think spas are the wave of the future," she adds. "I really think that people are energetically attracted to what they need."

Chez Aubrey is located at 114 Royce St., Suite B. The grand reopening runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m. For more information, call 408.399.4711.