Picture tutorial: Home made room freshener

 

Todays post will be about a very simple home made room freshener. Here in Shanghai, we cannot get real trees, that smell of Christmas. Years ago, I was very into fragrances, essential oils and the such and still have some supplies left over. It's well known, that you can add essential oils into water, light a tealight under it to warm it up to freshen the room, however a tea light goes out, and with our cats, I am very careful about open flames. Our kitten is still extremely playful and WILL examine every new thing I put out.

 

All you need for this project is a glass jar with lid, some baking powder and some essential oil. Fitting to this season, I decided on pine.

 

Put some baking powder into the glass jar, add 4-5 drops of essential oil, close jar and shake. I made my jar about 5 days ago, open it every once in a while, until the room smells of pine. Give it a nice shake everytime you open the jar and the smell will permeate the room slowly.

Depending on the season, you can vary the scent. Lavender is calming and could be used in the bedroom, citronella keeps mossies away.

Have fun making your own home scents

 



Wow, now that that went well, I'll try my second post. Christmas is nearing and this year, I have decided to go all out and try my hand at DIY Christmas decorations. First thing I tried out were the Santas. My landlady decided to cut some branches off our camphor trees and when I heard that, I asked whether we could keep some of the wood, as we needed some for our fire basket. Some of the logs inspired me to try out something new, well at least for me, I must admit, I have seen them before on the net.

 

These were made of small cutoffs, small enough to be able to grace our dining table

 

Big brother Santa is watching over our pile og logs and our entrance

 

My door wreath made out of cookie cutters

My recycled xmas tree in our hallway, made out of planks from an old crate and packaging from a parcel from Taobao (chinese version of ebay)