When throwing a party, the bulk of my planning revolves around three main things: the tasty foods and craft cocktails/mocktails I will be serving; the parts of my home that need deep cleaning before the big day; and how to make the space smell and feel fresh and inviting. On this list, my favorite part is choosing my home fragrance! People often underestimate the power of scent or just don’t know where to start. With that in mind, I'm sharing some of my favorite tricks and recipes for freshening up a space.

Each year around the holidays, I create a new lip balm recipe to share on both the Mountain Rose Herbs blog and with my friends and family. They make a great stocking stuffer and the people in my life enjoy seeing what I’ve come up with for the season. I love that lip balms can be made in bulk for sharing, and I love this fun and useful expression of my craft.

A few months back, our friend Janice Cox shared a luscious bath truffle recipe from her book, Beautiful Flowers. After making it several times, I embarked on a journey to create other fun variations from the base recipe. Historically, I have loved making bath bombs, and they make exceptional gifts, but they can also be finicky, even for the well-trained bath bomber. Bath truffles, on the other hand, are a bit easier to work with and contain more rich and hydrating oils and butters. Like bath bombs, bath truffles still fizz and can be customized with different scents, but they hold their shape easier.

Gingerbread is a nostalgic aroma for me. It takes me back to my childhood in New Jersey, where I grew up appreciating our family holiday celebrations and traditions. One of the many fun memories of my childhood was decorating gingerbread houses and people. I even carried that seasonal practice into college, where my best friend and I crafted some pretty over-the-top gingerbread houses. Now, being three thousand miles away from my family and my closest friends can be difficult, especially around the holidays. But bringing in nostalgic elements of these precious childhood memories helps me to feel closer to them. One of the most transformative ways I have found to do this is through aromatherapy. 

Gift-giving can be difficult, especially during the holidays. Finding the right gift at the right price is hard enough, but then layer on crowded parking lots, long shopping lines, and inclement weather, and you have yourself a recipe for holiday stress! We just don’t need that added pressure in our already hectic lives.

With this in mind, I curated a simple list of budget-friendly gift ideas that you can have delivered right to your doorstep. You’ll find the perfect gifts for the health enthusiast, foodie, tea lover, or fragrance connoisseur in your life. (Or for yourself; you also deserve it!)

Homemade perfumes are wonderful for a myriad of reasons. From the ability to try new things without an enormous price tag to the pleasure of crafting something both beautiful and useful, perfume making is a pastime that I’ve grown to truly love. I custom tailor fragrances to match my mood or emotional needs or to harness the energetics of certain plants. But I also have a fondness for crafting blends that match the seasons.

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Each year as I make my holiday gift list, I have a certain set of criteria that I aim for. Offerings that are thoughtful, personal, and useful are my top priorities. I have generally found that homemade gifts are more appreciated than things that I can find in mass at any big box store. Small-batch DIY gifts also allow for customization and are great for keeping waste out of landfills.

I want to share some of my favorite recipe ideas that hail from a variety of different masterminds on the Mountain Rose Herbs team. I recommend using these as a baseline and tailoring them for the person you are gifting.

As we prepare to have guests over through the holiday months, it’s important that our friends and family feel comfortable when nature calls. After all, the key to life is not letting anyone know that you, in fact, have bowel movements. All kidding aside, it’s a sensitive subject for many, so giving your guest options that don’t involve heavy synthetic fragrances or noisy and environmentally harmful aerosol cans is both considerate and helpful.

When you think of autumn, what comes to mind? Is it the colorful masterpiece of the treescape, or the sound of crunching leaves? Possibly the taste of a pumpkin spice latte or warm mulled cider? For me, it’s the aromas whirling through the air that herald the coming of fall.

Over my years of DIY tinkering I’ve created over a hundred body care, culinary, and green cleaning recipes. Some I love seasonally, others come and go for one reason or another, and some shining stars remain a constant in my everyday life. One member of this VIP list is a “Four Thieves®” multi-surface spray. It’s easy to make, and its versality means that it earns its keep in my natural cleaning supply closet. It also smells fresh and invigorating and cuts grease with the likes of commercially available soaps and sprays.

If you’re like me, you aim to not waste any of your herbal ingredients—you understand that hard-working pollinators and farmers put a lot of love and care into getting the finest organic botanicals into your cupboard. This is why I began exploring ways to reuse my herbs after making herbal preparations. Through years of making tea, infused oils, tinctures, vinegars, and honeys, I’ve tinkered up some fun ways to upcycle the remaining plant material, often called the “marc,” into other fine uses and crafts.