Lavender sleep sprays DIY

Years back I bought a bedtime spray from Avon and I used to spray it in my bedroom and on my pillow every night before went to sleep. It was lavender and I used it religiously until I could no longer buy it. What do we do when we can't buy something anymore? We make it!

Lavender is well known for its aromatherapy properties. Many people use it to help calm down, or even to go to sleep. One of the great things about using a particular item to help you go to sleep is that you get so used to it happening before you go to sleep, that it becomes a trigger that tells your body to go to sleep.

It's why all the experts recommend bedtime routines for children who can't fall asleep well or even for adults who have trouble falling asleep at bedtime. For me, a spritz of my Lavender Lay Down Spray tells my mind to calm down and get ready to sleep.

Thankfully this sleep spray is one of the easiest and cheapest recipes I make... Because I use it every night, so I go through quite a bit!

You're only going to need three things for each of these recipes. Well, four if you count the spray bottle. Distilled water, witch hazel or micellar water and lavender essential oils.

Essential Oils That Can Reduce Stress

If there is one thing we're all dealing with lately...it's stress! Over the past year or so I've turned to more natural methods of dealing with that stress and the anxiety it can bring. One of my favorite natural remedies is essential oils and since aromatherapy is know to impact mood, there are many essential oils that are great for dealing with stress. 

Smell is intensely linked to both memory and emotion, perhaps more than any other sense. The perfume industry is practically based on this fact...not to mention the whole scented candle and air freshener industry! 

For instance, the majority of people have a positive reaction to the smell of vanilla and associate it with pleasant childhood memories. If you ask them, they can't exactly put a name to what they're feeling, but it's definitely a positive feeling.

DIY homemade cuticle oil recipe

I have had really nice nails for a long time. I've taken care of my cuticles and nails by rubbing cuticle oil into them several time a week, for the last 30 years! It started when my mom went on a trip and came back with a bottle of cuticle oil from a local shop. Of course I ran out eventually and tried just about every cuticle product I could buy before settling on my own recipe for homemade cuticle oil.

I like making things at home for many reasons, but the main one being that there are not a ton of chemicals added. There is enough toxins in everyday life I don't need to be rubbing them into my hands. My favorite recipe for cuticle oil has only two ingredients and neither one is toxic! 

The main ingredient is sweet almond oil. 

Skin healing hand butter DIY

How many times have you washed your hands this week? If it's anything like me, well...I lost track long ago! One of the problems with washing your hands so often though is it depletes the skin's natural oils making the skin dry. Skin this dry requires a seriously moisturizing cream. Unfortunately when we can't run to the store for every single thing and we're out of hand cream what do we do? Make our own! 

I know now is not exactly the time to run out shopping for ingredients either so I'm using what I have on hand. I'll link to where ya'll can order the same ingredients online. I will also list several options in case you have one type of butter or oil but not another. 

I wish I could use super common ingredients like coconut oil, but I just don't like it for this type of project.

I used to have a love affair with coconut oil, just like everybody else did for a while there. Unfortunately it's too greasy on my skin. Maybe in the winter I could get away with using it, but any other time of year it felt like it just didn't sink into my skin. I felt like I constantly had slimy, oily skin.

Now that's not for things like my burn salve because in that instance you want them to stick around for awhile and not sink right into the skin. Salves have a bit of protective quality to them, like a barrier on your skin. Lotions and creams though need to sink in to do their job. 

10 Essential oils you absolutely need

Essential oils are becoming increasingly popular for many different uses. People use them to support their health, clean their homes and even for pets. With so many uses and so many oils out there how do you know where to start? 

Nobody wants to spend hundreds of dollars on a huge EO kit then find themselves only using 2 or 3 of them! So what essential oils are the most popular and/or most needed in the home?

If you're just getting started you'll want to read how I got started using essential oils cheaply for some tips on how to buy quality EOs affordably. Luckily the first 6 on my list are very common, so you should be able to find them for a great price at the places I mention in that post. 

You don't have to jump in with both feet, start slow to avoid getting overwhelmed and spending more money than you should!

Before we go any further I need to note that: while essential oils should not be a substitute for professional medical care, they can be successfully employed for many minor complaints, and as adjuncts to other therapies. 

As with any natural healthcare it's important to know when to use home methods and when to seek a professionals opinion.

Autumn Room Sprays using essential oils

Well, it's official...Autumn is on it's way and the stores are filled with the cutest fall décor. One of the things all the stores are stocked up on right now is anything that smells like apples, pumpkin spice and bonfires. I was picking up new pumpkin shaped jars to make my MYO Autumn gel air fresheners and I decided to make some essential oils room sprays while I was at it!

Ya'll know how much I prefer EOs to store bought chemical fragrances and room freshening sprays are no different! I grabbed some small spray bottles to use for these room sprays and started working on scent combinations. I'm pretty sure I can come up with more fall scents than a candle store!

Actually, did you know that I used to work in a candle store, and yes...I made scent blends! But seriously, I would like to know who is in charge of the bonfire and falling leaves scents they sell in those fancy candle lines because those things are way off! lol Sorry, I digress...

Making your own air fresheners is super easy and it's so much better for your health to use these in your home than store bought sprays that are packed with tons of chemicals! I mean, do you really know what all those things on the ingredient list are? It's kinda scary when you think about it.

Fall air freshener DIY and other homestead gifts

The first cool day has come which means the unofficial start of pumpkin everything season! Lol No really, fall is on it's way and the stores are filled with the cutest Autumn decor. Incidentally just last week I was whipping up a new batch of my MYO air fresheners using essential oils and I got the idea to make some fall themed scents and use some of those cute jars and such to hold them! 

Making your own air fresheners is super easy and it's so much better for your health to have these in your home than one of those scented cone air fresheners that are packed with tons of chemicals! Or even the gel ones.

I mean, do you really know what all those things on the ingredient list are? It's kinda scary when you think about it. 

I have 2 different ways I like to make my own air fresheners. The first is to make a gel with gelatin, water, vodka and food coloring then add essential oils and allow to cool. 

This makes an awesome scented gel that is no spill and can be customized completely. These are great for filling cute seasonal votives and glass pumpkins. (exact recipe below)

Homemade hand sanitizer

When my daughter was little she was obsessed with glitter gel. I wouldn't let her have it because it was so full of chemicals. Then I came up with the idea of adding glitter to aloe vera gel. Aloe vera is completely skin safe and can be made without extra chemicals. Well from all my research about aloe vera I know that it is antibacterial and antiviral. So basically aloe has almost everything you need to make your own hand sanitizer. Plus it's skin safe.

Of course it's antibacterial and antiviral properties are mild compared to alcohol which damages the bacteria or viruses thus killing them. So after my daughters obsession with glitter gel wore off I started using the leftover product that we had made as hand sanitizer.

I'm way into essential oils and one of my favorite essential oils is tea tree oil. Tea tree or melaleuca oil, is known for its antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties. Combine this essential oil with rubbing alcohol and aloe gel and you have the perfect recipe for homemade hand sanitizer. 

MYO Carpet freshening powder

Many of you have already heard the story about the stinky rug spots from the cat issue. I did find a solution for that smell but along the way I tried a whole bunch of natural solutions to get rid of carpet odors. Some of them worked a little, others not at all. 

One of the home cleaning solutions worked pretty well, even thought it was up against some nasty smells! This is the DIY smelly carpet powder I want to talk about today.

It was a cheap and easy way to remove smells from stinky rugs and I started using it throughout the house on my carpets. I especially liked it because it was non toxic and I always had the ingredients on hand!

If you read the story about the cat odor you'll see that I came up with a natural spray on solution that wipes out cat odors from cat pee. That's a particularly tough smell to eradicate! 

Unfortunately this powder wasn't quite strong enough to wipe that out, but it almost handled it and impressed me enough that I decided to give it a go on other smelly surfaces.

17 Home remedies for muscle soreness (to help you feel better quickly!)

The older I get the harder it is to bounce back after any kind of hard work. Whether it be gardening, chopping wood, cleaning chicken coops, taking a long walk through the woods or going to the gym, I now get sore easier and it lasts longer. Muscle pain can really put a cramp in your day (pun intended) and since I'm not a fan of over the counter or prescription medications, I often turn to home remedies to help with muscle pain and inflammation.

Speaking of the gym, I have a serious love hate relationship with the gym. I love to be in the gym, but I hate to go there. So when ends up happening is that I never go and when I finally do, I way over do it. That is not a recipe for a great feeling body! In fact, that is my #1 way to make myself sore for 3 days.

It's inevitable that I'll have sore muscles for time to time. The question is how to get rid of the soreness naturally? I have a few different methods I use from muscle rubs and essential oils to herbs and stretches.

17 Home remedies for muscle soreness

Epsom salts:
Epsom salts are actually magnesium sulfate from an area called Epsom which is in England. It hasn't actually been proven that these can soak into your body through your skin...but a soak in a warm bath with Epsom salts sure does help me feel better!

Yoga:
The gentle stretches of yoga can help relieve muscle pain. Be careful not to overdo it! Simple poses like the child's pose, sphinx pose or standing forward bend can help ease muscle soreness.

The best essential oils for headache relief

Lately I have been getting a lot of headaches. It started about three months ago. A couple of times a week I would wake up with a headache behind my eyes. It was a dull pain that made it hard to think straight at times. Sometimes the pain was actually in my eyes, other times it felt like sinus pressure, but it was always in the same general area.

Sometimes these headaches would last a couple hours. Other times they would last all the way till bedtime. I was having a hard time stopping them and I couldn't even figure out where they came from.

I tried all the usual things for headaches: aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen, heat, cold, sleep, caffeine, even allergy medicines and nothing worked. I slept well & I don't have allergies so there was basically no reason why I would wake up with these headaches. Especially since it never happened before! (yes, I did see a Dr. and she couldn't find a medical reason why I started getting headaches)

I eventually turned to essential oils out of desperation. I was literally grasping at straws. I was just praying something would work because it's really hard to go through your entire day with your whole head full of squeezing pressure. 

I have essential oils on hand, I use them in my salve recipes and diffuser all the time. So luckily I had about 20 to choose from and carrier oils to go with them.

Make you own air fresheners

Would you like to make your own air fresheners using essential oils but don't know where to start? I have 3 super easy recipes to show you today. The first recipe uses gelatin to make a gel air freshener, kind of like the commercial gel cones in stores. I also use water beads to make a fun, bubble looking air freshener. Lastly we'll throw it way back to when we all put baking soda in our refrigerators to make the third (easiest) one.

I actually still put baking soda in my refrigerator, but I digress.

I've never been fond of commercial air fresheners. I like the scents, I've just always worried about what kind of chemicals they put into them to make them smell like that. Is it really a good idea to breathe that stuff in? So I started using essential oils to scent my house several years back. I put them in reed diffusers and mixed them into soy candles as I made them.

The easiest way I found to use essential oils as an air freshener was by mixing them with  baking soda OR Orbeez (water balls) and simply setting a dish of them out in the room. I was using this method for several years when I found that you can make gel air fresheners with gelatin and EO's. Game changer! It's super easy too...

How to make air freshener with essential oils

I know there is a lot of talk about which essential oils are the best and most pure. When using essential oils for air fresheners though, that's not as important as when placing them on your skin. 

Not that you don't still want to use pure oils...you do! It's just using essential oils as a room deodorizer is the perfect way to use up oils that are a little older, lower quality or the ones in your oil kit that you just can't find a use for. 

Related reading: Getting started with Essential oils cheaply.

Getting started with essential oils, frugally

I'm sure by now you've seen a billion testimonies about how essential oils are the best thing since sliced bread. People are talking about how they use essential oils for cleaning, healthcare, aromatherapy, pets, disease treatment etc etc. You've no doubt also taken a look at these products are realized just how much money it costs for some of these 'starter kits'. I've seen some that were almost $200! Ouch! So, how can you get started with essential oils without spending a ton of money?

There is a much cheaper way to get started with EOs! Not only is it cheaper to start, but you'll also find out if you really like and use them before you end up stuck with a 30 oil kit.

I simply started with a few individual bottles based on what I'm planning on using the oils for. I did some research and picked affordable brands that were well known to be high quality. I went with general oils like tea tree and lavender which aren't expensive to begin with. 

After I used those for awhile I added a 'set' of oils to my collection. As I got more experienced with them I branched out to more expensive brands, but let me explain my process so far....

How I got rid of toenail fungus (quickly & naturally)

This is gross, so I apologize in advance. Unfortunately somewhere over the course of summer I ended up with toenail fungus. Was it from the shower's at the gym? Something I stepped in by the lake? Did I pick it up at the pool? Who knows! What I do know is that it is painless and it moves slowly, so when I first noticed it I may have already had it awhile.

I also know that every over the counter treatment I tried failed completely. I considered getting a Rx for it but was hesitant to put a medication in my whole body just for something under my toenail. 

Finally I decided to try essential oils since I'm really more of a natural healthcare chick anyway. I was absolutely amazed when it only took a few weeks to start seeing results from this simple treatment!

Let's go back to the beginning. It started when I removed my nail polish one day and noticed a spot at the top of my right big toe. It was under the nail and it was slightly yellow and went into the nail bed a bit.

I thought maybe I bumped it somewhere and part of it had bruised so I grabbed some tweezers and used one side to scrape out the yellow stuff. I cleaned it up with some rubbing alcohol, repainted and thought that was it.

A few weeks later when I was changing my polish again I noticed it went down further under my nail now. I figured I had a problem so I looked it up online and found WEB MD's site. I realized it was nail fungus and decided that I better get something to fix it so I headed to the drugstore.

Make your own Calendula skin salve

My son has weird hands. No one can figure out exactly why but every winter the skin gets very dry (only the backs) and actually start to crack and bleed! It's been happening for about 7 years now. It finally occurred to me to make him an herbal salve from Calendula and his hands have been healing up quite nicely!

Calendula (Calendula officinalis) has marvelous skin healing properties and I've had him soak his hands in cooled Calendula tea which has helped soothe it a bit, but never quite healed completely. 

This happens to him every winter and it lasts until spring, then it miraculously goes away. Weird I tell you! About the only lotion that worked without burning was that Working Hands stuff from the store, but it's loaded with chemicals. 

I finally decided that since the tea helped a little, I needed to find a way to keep the Calendula on his hands and I would have to make him a salve.

I love using the herbs I grow to make things! I had already made Calendula oil from flowers this summer so I just had to come up with a way to use it on his skin. 

I decided to add beeswax to thicken it and coconut oil as a moisturizer, plus a dash of Tea Tree essential oil since it has such great healing properties.

This recipe doesn't make a very big batch, but it's enough to last him all winter...and I use it for my hands in summer since all the washing and scrubbing garden dirt off dries them out so badly. It's also amazing on dry/cracked heels! 

I don't tend to use big batch recipes though, because I like to make this as I need it so it's always fresh. Since homemade salves and body care products do not contain added preservatives, then tend to go bad after awhile. 

By making only small batches I use them up before they go bad!