Classy little photo ornaments...

If you're in need of a nice but-not-too-expensive gift for a hostess or relative or friend or mailman or etc. this season, hop on over to Pottery Barn Kids ASAP... they just placed a number of their Christmas decor items on sale, and there are some lovely little photo ornaments (round and square frames) with your choice of personalization "etched into the photo mat".  And shipping's free.  And the personalization's free.  So they're just $5.99 plus tax, and look super swanky.

I just bought about a dozen.  No, really.  I did.

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How to feel incredibly proud of yourself in November.

Forgive me.  I must brag a bit.

Steps to my happiness:

1.  Last month I bought a KHOZ Bids for Bargains certificate for a $190 room @ Basin Park for $90.
2.  KHOZ then lost my certificate (ie sold it to someone else) and instead gives me a Crescent Hotel gift card for $250.  (The Crescent is also in Eureka and owned by the same people.)
3.  I did some hunting online and noticed that Basin Park has a $199 deal for weekdays in November that includes all manner of extras, including the "best room available."
4.  I called and sweetalked Basin Park into accepting my Crescent gift card for their weekday deal.  Then I secured the honeymoon suite for a Sunday night and talked the husband into cancelling his Monday appointments (not necessarily in that order).
5.  While I was at it, I bought a $25 gift certificate for $3 via restaurant.com for dinner Sunday night.  (Um, if you do this, go for the DeVitos rather than the Pied Piper trashy biker grill.  Yeah, slight fumble there on my part.)
6.  I made an overworked husband very, very happy.  And tonight and tomorrow I get to:
Hang out with my husband in a beautiful stone-walled sitting room overlooking our wedding spot in Basin Park.  (Oh, and a jacuzzi tub.  And a huge bed.  But you don't need to know any more about THAT.)
Get a massage.
Visit my most beloved Mud Street for breakfast, and finally get to go through the Eureka historical museum at my own (snail's) pace tomorrow.
Eat lunch on the balcony.
Blow your $50 certificate in any of several art galleries.
And go home with $40 still left on that gift card.

This may just be my ultimate score EVER.

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Essential Oil gifts

Happy Saturday Morning!  Long time no post! 

Gardener's Supply is one of my favorite catalogs... mostly for their gardening products, but their gifts and home products are beautiful and well-chosen as well.  I noticed that this season they suddenly have a huge array of aromatherapy products that would make lovely gifts and stocking stuffers.  Maybe this is catching on elsewhere in the world as well!

Here's a link that will show them all to you.  My favorites are the ones I could use (or give) with my own collection of oils, as I like to have much more information about the source and quality of EOs than they're offering on the oils they sell.  (Also, all their oils are priced identically... that's a bad sign, as they may have been diluted/messed with to make them match in costs/profits; as most of you know, there's a huge difference in the cost of different types of the pure oils.)

I'm eyeing that Monet Diffuser, but I'm not sure I could bring that into my house and let it leave as a gift!  That little terracotta owl is precious, too-- as is this chickadee that's on clearance.  And I know that Lanette abandoned her plan to buy the other diffusers (after hearing from Hannah and Darla that theirs hadn't lasted) and bought a Spa Mister instead, and is very happy with it.  (Although you can buy that spa mister cheaper here, with free shipping.)  And I'm totally enjoying my car diffuser, which turns my cigarette lighter into a therapeutic device!

Looks like code XNET8305 will get you 15% of a $50 order at Gardeners Supply right now. 

Are you giving any oil-related gifts this year?  Please share your ideas!

Posted via email from the Oil Crowd

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Just a bit giddy.

Well, I was going to come put up a post about my latest find... a set of adorable vintage Christmas trees.

I put them on Ebay this time instead of Etsy, and put what I thought was a pretty outrageous "buy it now" amount on them of $59.99.  I shot pretty cruddy pictures, too.

They sold in less than a day! Can you believe that?!

I love feeing like other people appreciate my finds.  Now to get them in the mail ASAP so they'll be available for the buyer's holiday decorating!

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Family Recipes

My grandmother passed away just after my daughter was born in January of 2006. One of the treasures that I received when my family was sorting through her belongings was her cookbook-- faded, stained, yellowed, and stuffed full of her notations and recipes jotted down on scraps of paper.

I'm determined to keep these two recipes in the family-- not because I'm particularly taken with them, but because they appear numerous times in the papers slipped into her cookbook. Apparently she kept asking for the recipes (both from my twin great-aunts, her sisters Sammie and Tommie) because she enjoyed the dishes so much, and didn't think she could locate her previous copy. Like most vintage recipes, they're not culinary wonders-- just simple, tasty food, prepared largely from pantry staples. This is small town church potluck food.

I put her notations below in italics. The lemon cake really is tasty; the Tallerina I have yet to try. (Looks like a good recipe for fans of Rotel cheese dip; we all know Velveeta's not really food, but does that keep us from loving it? NO.)

Lemon Cake

1 lemon cake mix
4 eggs
3/4 c oil
3/4 cup water
mis all ing together bake like it says o box.

Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
4 T lemon juice
mix togther

While cake is still hot, punch holes in cake with fork; pour icing over cake.

KEEP.
So good!

Talirina (or Tallerinna or Tallerina- it's spelled differently on each copy)
1 lb hamburger
1 can whole corn (drained)
1 can rotel
1 lb velveeta
1 can mushrooms
12 oz egg noodles
1 can tomato soup
(1 can) water (can from tomato soup)

Brown hamburger (drain)
Cook noodles (drain)
Add to hamburger, corn, rotel, mushrooms, tomato soup, velveeta (cut up), 1 can water
Pour this over noodles in a casserole dish.

All are cooked so it's ready to eat.
Will serve 15 or more people!
potluck dish
by (twins) Sammie and Tommie

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Christmas gift for the Ozark lover

This is mostly a find of local interest only.

Iconic Ozark photographer Tim Ernst offers two photographs each month at a discount-- these Photos of the Month are about half off his regular prices.

I'm particularly partial to this month's Hawksbill Crag photograph. He says it's one of his favorite shots of the Crag-- and he's been taking photographs of this Arkansas landmark for over 20 years.

If someone knows and loves the Ozarks, they've hiked out to photograph (and stand upon) this gorgeous outcropping. What a beautiful gift! At $49.95, signed and matted, I can find a 16x20 frame at Michael's (or something similar) and have a fantastic gift at minimum expense.

...Just a thought for those of you who share my affection for the Ozarks... or love someone who does.

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Toddler cough-- vanished.

I have a good story to share tonight!  Forgive me if this is a bit long; I'm trying to tell the story of how I thought through and selected a treatment.

Quinton, my nearly-two-year-old, got up this morning with a barking little cough.  Some chest congestion is fairly common for him-- he seems to have inherited my allergies.  However, this was that unhealthy, hoarse sounding sort of baby cough that makes a mom think, "uh-oh, here we go."

Except now, of course, Mom goes, "Hmm.... what can I try here?  Which of God's amazing plants was created to help heal my little fella today?"

I have a handful of aromatherapy books, all from different authors so that I can learn from multiple perspectives and backgrounds.  Most of them caution that "more is not necessarily better" and that many oils work best in smaller amounts rather than larger ones.  This seems counterintuitive to me, and I usually use the oils in higher concentrations than they recommend.  However, I've been wanting to try obeying their instructions-- less oils means less expense, after all!  If less works as well as (or better than) more, I'd be silly not to try it.

Another principle that I find fascinating is that essential oils work BETTER together than separately... that a blend of two or more oils will make each oil more effective than it would have been when not combined with the others.  (tip:  Lavender, in particular, seems to work as a fantastic "booster" for other oils.)  Again, this works against my sense of logic.  But I wanted to use a blend for my fella to see this principle work to end his cough.

With Quinton whoofing sadly as he played, I consulted my oil spreadsheet and pulled the oils I had that had mucolytic or anti-spasmodic qualities that would fight both the congestion and the cough.  I was about to make a blend myself for him.  (Yes, I'm slowly building an oil database.  I used to design databases for a living.  Nerdy, I know.)

But then I remembered:  I already had a blend on hand.  I bought a "respiratory" blend (made of eucalyptus globulus, eucalyptus radiata, eucalytus citriodora, pine needle, spruce needle, marjoram, lavender, cypress, peppermint, and myrtle) a few weeks back.  I don't own six of those ingredients, so I'd figured the $5 investment in a small bottle would be handy this fall.  Here was my chance to try it out.  At the last minute, I added a little cedarwood, frankincense and myrrh, because I love the scents and all have qualities that would help a congested cough.

So.  Into a 5ml bottle (about 100 drops), I placed:
3 drops respiratory blend
1 drop frankincense
1 drop myrrh
1 drop cedarwood
...and filled the rest with a carrier oil (jojoba, because it doesn't go bad or need to be refrigerated).  This is a blend of about 6% EOs to 94% carrier; still about twice as strong as several of those book authors would recommend.

I looked doubtfully at this little bottle.  So little essential oil in there!  And at 3 drops a rub, there's enough to use on Quinton's little chest 33 times.  How could this work?

You know the rest of the story, of course, because why would I be writing this otherwise?
Three drops of the diluted blend, rubbed into his little chest, with a little up onto his throat just in case that might be hurting him too.

The result?  NOT ONE MORE COUGH from that moment on.  I'm serious.  I put him to bed tonight still incredulous at how effective this seems to be.  Now, he may wake up with the cough in the morning again because I didn't continue the treatment-- I've had that problem myself with various things I've tried; once is often not quite enough to do the trick.  But it sure seems to have healed him, and I won't hesitate to use it several times tomorrow to finish it off if I need to.

It still blows my mind every time I get a result like this.  What a gift!

Posted via email from the Oil Crowd

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