Our herbal aromatherapy recipes blend garden-fresh herbs, flowers & spices to perfume your home and add moisture to our dry, winter homes. Plus, they’re easy to DIY into gifts as well.
Give herbal aromatherapy gift combos. They’re easy to DIY with our garden-fresh recipes & tips! Get our no-lye, easy soap recipe here.
Try making these cute bags of these deliciously scented aromatherapy herb blends to give your loved ones. They make fantastic hostess gifts and wonderful stocking stuffers. Following are several simple, delicious, brewable combos to make in our popular printable format with gift-wrapping tips too.
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Bundle these with homemade soaps from our simple, no-lye recipes, and you’ve got a complete gift for anyone!
REDIRECTED 4/10/2023
Fill your home with Christmas fragrance with spices like these in your stove top humidifier. To make this fragrance into a gift, be sure to use dried orange peel & dried ginger so your gift doesn’t mold!
Christmas Spice Blend Three Garden Herb Blends Astringent & Calming Blend Dried lavender & rose buds from your garden create wonderful herbal aromatherapy in your stove humidifier.
Calming & Clarifying Blend Savory Home-cooking Blend To use on the stove top: Tips for creating gift sachets: Cut a single layer of cheese cloth into about 6-8″ square. Only use dried ingredients if you’re making a gift otherwise your sachet may mold before you give it away. Fresh ingredients are fine if you’re popping them into your own stove top humidifier right away. Simply roll your filled cheese cloth, then gather the long ends of the roll together and tie into a snug knot. Don’t add anything that can’t go into a boiling pot of water! Once your sachet is filled, rolled & tied, tuck in a few dried flowers or spices to decorate your bundles.
Print
Directions for preparing & making sachets & using these blends follows the list of blends.
Ingredients
1 T whole cloves
1 tangerine, orange or other citrus peel
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1 slice fresh or candied ginger
Ingredients
1-2 sprigs fresh Rosemary (even if it is frozen in the garden)
2-3 Tablespoons dried lavender buds (or garden stem/flower cuttings)
tangerine or orange peel
1-2 dried lemon verbena stem
Ingredients
2-3 Tablespoons dried lavender buds (or garden stem/flower cuttings)
1-2 sprigs eucalyptus (optional)
small handful dried rose petals or buds (about 3-4 Tablespoons)
Ingredients
1-2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1-2 sprigs fresh sage
several sprigs of thyme (lemon or lime thyme is especially great!)
Add one of the above combos (in a sachet or loose) to a medium size sauce pan or dedicated kettle filled (to a couple of inches below the top-line) with water. Place on warm wood stove-top (according to manufacturer’s guidelines) or cook-top. If on a cooktop, bring the water just to boiling and then turn down to a low simmer, or boil a little higher to release more moisture into the air faster. Add additional water as needed; don’t let it dry out. Occasionally, as fragrance diminishes, strain out the spices, cuttings and fruit peels, add them to your compost and start over with fresh water in a cleaned pan/kettle with fresh spice or herb blends. Don’t let the ingredients stand and get moldy!
When creating gift blends, be sure to use dried ingredients. Fresh herbs, flowers and fruit is likely to rot before you’re able to give your gifts. And, we use food-grade cheese cloth for our bundles since we’re sure this won’t damage kettles and pots on the stove. Pretty, dyed fabrics might look nice, but who knows what they’ll do in a pot of boiling water!
Original post follows.
Notes from 2012 update:
Cold winter weather like the snap that caused much of powerful Snoqualmie Falls to freeze solid briefly in 2009 can also dry out your skin. Humidifiers help abate the dry!
Try picking aromatherapy herbs directly from the garden to avoid winter dryness and to add safe, non-toxic fragrances to your home. We simmer pots of water filled with freshly-picked sprigs, spices and fruits on the stove. This is a fantastic way to keep your house smelling great, your skin from chapping, and you can do it without spending a penny. All it takes is a quick trip to the garden, a few cups of water, and a heat source.
From Christmas-y fragrances to clarifying and calming blends, we’ve put together a few mixture ideas to get you started.
Read on for more from our post from Decembers-past…
(Original post from December 19, 2008 follows)
As my friend Kim wrote elsewhere, I’m preparing for day 4 of my captivity. Between a nasty head cold, frigid temps, and frozen icy roads, I’m pretty well home bound these days. And with outdoor temps staying well below freezing as dry, cold arctic winds rage in from the north, our furnace is running nearly non-stop. Result: indoor humidity is dropping, which doesn’t help my sinuses (or skin or hair or lips or attitude) at all. And, the Christmas tree seems to dry out just a little faster when the indoor air humidity is low despite how full we keep the water reservoir.
Frosty Enjoying Frigid Temps
I spent many of my growing-up years in a wood-stove-heated farmhouse in Virginia. The heat was toasty, but we always battled dry heat. To remedy this we kept a heavy kettle filled with water on each of the stoves. The kettle produced steam that helped humidify the air. We had to be vigilant about refilling the kettle regularly, but depending on how high the stove was running, we generally only had to refill it a couple of times a day.
These days I don’t have a wood stove, but I do have a kitchen stove where I keep a small pot of water going all winter. I have tried commercial humidifiers in the past, but I’m not sold on them. To add interest and fragrance to the house, there are a few things we add to our makeshift humidifier. Spice blends add holiday aromas. Herb blends add relaxing and healing fragrances that help keep a closed up, stale house a bit more fresh. Consider trying out a blend one of the following blends in your own home. If you’re missing one of the ingredients, try the remaining ones or mix-it-up yourself. The worst thing that can happen is you dump it out in the compost and start over.
If you have a blend of your own or other ideas to add much-needed humidity to our winter homes, please share them!
Sorry to hear you are battling a cold. I have been using Wild Oregano drops and caps to fend off, mircle product in my view! I saw your recipe with candied ginger and had to add that I update my Molasses Spice Cookies recipe to include rolling the balls in a mix of sugar and minced candied ginger before baking. I encourgage one and all to try that -YUM! Enjoy the weather, stay warm and get well.
thanks for the well wishes Cath. Where do you get the miracle products? If I can get past the ice, I’ll try to find them.
And, I need either a batch of those cookies or the recipe. Sounds fantastic!