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.

My mother used to tie dried lavender flowers into squares of cloth to make little lavender pouches and then she tucked them into her shoes. Not only did this freshen her footwear, it also meant that every time anyone opened her closet door, the lovely, calming scent of lavender drifted out into the room. This botanical shoe-freshening method was a charming fix for her professional office shoes, but wouldn’t have been enough for the boots and shoes I wear to work in my yard or to go hiking in. At the end of a long winter day outside in the Western Oregon rain and mud, my rubber homestead boots and hearty hiking boots need more than a freshener; they need a deodorizer. That’s where this time-tested, natural boot and shoe deodorizer is a godsend. It works on the same principle as the lovely lavender packets my mother used, but brings the deodorizing power of baking soda, rosemary, and sage to the task.

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. 

By the time winter rolls around, I usually find myself seeking cozy comfort, uplifting cheer, and robust wellness support. While fuzzy blankets, social gatherings, and immune-boosting herbal teas are tried and true, I also look to aromatherapy as an essential wintertime ally.

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!)

I love rosehips. I love the way they look on rose shrubs and how they remain bright points of color as the gray of winter approaches. I love how they feed wildlife when it’s cold. I love the nutritional and healthful gifts they offer. And I particularly love how those tart little hips are perfect for jellies, jams, and syrups. I don’t always have time in the fall to harvest and clean fresh hips, so I am always grateful for dried rosehips when winter finally arrives and I can slow down and do some cold weather nesting. Now I have the time to pull luscious dried rosehips from my apothecary closet to make rosehip jelly for my family. However, said family firmly believes that rosehip jelly season also means cookie season, because homemade jellies and jams are the best for thumbprint and/or frosted sugar cookies.

Although goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) was used by First Nations peoples for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived in the Americas, the first written source regarding goldenseal appears in an 1801 series of essays by botanist and physician Benjamin Smith Barton titled Towards a Materia Medica in the United States. Early colonists found a well-established trade network already in place for medicinal herbs, including goldenseal. Indigenous people used it as a dye and also for a variety of health issues, including as a bitter to support digestion, as a skin and eye wash, and as a dental rinse. By the 1830s, goldenseal was also a favorite of practitioners of Eclectic medicine, and demand was increasing exponentially. That demand has never let up and today goldenseal is considered to be one of the most at-risk herbs on United Plant Savers' At-Risk Medicinal Plants List. There is, however, a potentially bright future for goldenseal thanks to innovations in cultivation.

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.