Experiment- I’m going to lightly spray doTERRA Peppermint and Cedarwood essential oils on my garden shoes before digging in the yard. Pretty sure it will send all the Box Elder bugs and ants scurrying AWAY from me instead of up my pant legs. Yikes! Here I go.
Oh and if it doesn’t work, I have Lavender to soothe the skin irritations. Wish me luck!
A soothing moldable dough that will give children a sensory experience and help them calm down at the same time. Where was this magical thing when I was raising kids?
Found it on Growing A Jeweled Rose. Can’t wait to try it for the grand-littles. I can see it now…
“Here my darlings. Play with this lovely…smushy…comforting dough…ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz.”
Ahhh…here we are again, at that lovely time of year. My absolute favorite, to be exact. Leaves changing and falling everywhere. The holidays approaching. That nippy cool snap in the air. But with all this loveliness also comes the musty furnace coming on at night and the cool air coming on in the day. It’s a balance from hour to hour to not roast or freeze. At our house, sometimes all these changes brings an occasional bout of scratchy throats for the big and little folks.
Must be time to whip up a batch of Honey Spice Throat Drops! Yummo.
Now, I need to tell you–if you venture out and make your own throat drops using this recipe, please, PLEASE go HERE first and find out what Hard Crack Stage actually is for your area at this time of year. It’s not hard to figure out, but it is different everywhere and changes with the weather and moisture in the air. It’s pretty aggravating to follow the directions and have the same temperature I use actually not set up, or worse, burn in your area. Do the test and your drops will work.
Mine were a tad more sticky this time because it was raining outside while I was making them. I should have cooked them a minute or two longer. But they still tasted great and did the job.
Look very closely at this picture. I was sitting in the car peeling a tangerine one chilly winter day.
When, to my delight, and because the sun was hitting in just the right spot, I could clearly see all the lovely citrus-y oils, simply bursting out into the air.
And of course, those teeny, tiny oil drops above my fingertips, are just the ones released when I tore through the peel.
Look at the hundreds–perhaps thousands of drops left in the un-torn part of the strip. See them?
Imagine if you could capture all those misty little drops and save them in a container to use later. Wouldn’t that be incredible?
So, WHY hasn’t someone figured out how to capture all that Tangerine goodness and bottle it?! Hmmmmm?
Yes, yes. I’ll admit it. The hall cupboard was a mess. This is the top shelf and all the things you want to keep from the little people. Cleaners, bug spray, and umm…game pieces…apparently.
Second shelf was, sadly worse because with our newly acquired love of a more natural approach to healthcare, well…things on this shelf just got kinda stuffed in and neglected.
The first step was to gather and throw away everything that was old, outdated, expired or otherwise deadly. The bag was huge…trust me. I would have taken a picture of it but it sincerely embarrassed me. So, instead I snuck it out and dropped it in the trash. Next, I put all the old lotions and perfumes in a bucket and tried to figure out if I wanted to keep them or not. I looked up “perfume and lotion disposal” on Google and found that this calm, non-assuming little bucket holds “toxic, hazardous waste” and that I wasn’t suppose to dispose of it in the regular trash…it was that bad. Funny that it doesn’t say anything like that on the labels. It just tells me how to apply it to my FACE. yikes.
It was amazing how much space there was once all the crazy, nasty, old stuff was gone.
There was plenty of room for the cough drops, and light bulbs and nail polish and chap stick.
And best of all–I saved a nice, cozy spot for my oil box, smack-dab in the middle. Where we can all get at it.