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Anyone first starting out with essential oils is likely to have encountered lavender early on, either in a beginner’s essential oil kit or as an ingredient in simple fragrance recipes. Its captivating floral scent is easily recognizable and often found in blends designed to calm your mental state, cleanse your house or clothing, or support and refresh skin. However, as you continue with your aromatherapy adventures, you might find yourself asking questions like "what is lavender 40/42?" and "wait, you want me to cook with lavender oil?". With so many lavender recipes out there, it's important to understand your ingredients—and we're here to help!

Winter can be hard on the skin, especially the complexion. If you think about it, you literally “face” the blustery temperature and winds of winter, only to come inside to be abruptly met with warm, dry heat. This cycle can create quite a bit of turmoil for your skin, and it’s times like these that your largest organ appreciates some extra love and attention. This is what sparked the inspiration to create a DIY protective balm for the face (though I actually use it for the whole body).

Powerful and intoxicating, essential oils can arouse feelings of love, passion, and attraction. They can enhance your self-appreciation, strengthen bonds with others, and create memorable moments through scent. To help you spread the love, we're sharing six of our favorite passion-kindling plant essences, which can be used on their own or combined into customized blends to create heart-warming perfumes, massage oils, and so much more.

When it comes to natural wellness and green living, there’s no escaping the buzz about essential oils and all their many uses—but where to start? These powerful plant essences demand respect, so we’ve put together some of our favorite resources to kick-start your aromatherapy adventures. For expert tips on how to put your pure essential oils to work safely and economically, read on!

Valentine’s Day is a day dedicated to love—love for a partner, for friends, or for family, yes, but it's also the perfect excuse for some self-love too. Simple to create, our plant-based recipes are perfect for pampering those whom we cherish. These sumptuous preparations are formulated to relax the body and mind, uplift the spirit, and incite feelings of closeness and love.

Scents surround us everyday, everywhere, but we often find ourselves lacking the language to adequately describe them. Those who craft fragrances for aromatherapy or simple enjoyment often borrow from the lexicon of music to characterize different scents, and familiarizing yourself with the concept of these "fragrance notes" can help you create harmony and balance in your own essential oil blends. 

Some people might tell you that making your own leave-in hair conditioner is as simple as watering down the wash-out product already in your shower. But if you've adopted a no-poo hair care routine or need a little extra nourishment to bring your dry hair back to life, a deeper moisturizing treatment might be in order. An oil-based leave-in conditioner can help tame wild flyaways, soften brittle hair in dry temperatures, and protect a healthy mane.

The winter season is often a time for travel, holidays, family gatherings, and sometimes battling the germs that can accompany these festivities. During this season of cozy blankets, hot cocoa, and fireside chats, I try my best to keep my family healthy and happy, but it’s not always easy. I live and die by my Grandmother’s “golden rule”: always wash your hands with soap as often as possible. This single action is proven to help prevent the spread of germs and is an effective way to remove pesky bacteria from your hands. All it takes is 20 seconds of hand washing with soap and clean water. I especially like foaming hand soap because it’s easier to use and more fun for the kiddos. You can find a foaming bottle at most stores, or you can repurpose foaming soap bottles that you’ve purchased in the past.

Winter Solstice is a time of change, both seen and felt. Waning daylight works upon our bodily rhythms and subtly shifts our mindsets and moods. As darkness obscures the world around us, these seasonal tides encourage us to reflect on that which has been hidden from view—sometimes by turning inward, and sometimes by feeling our way through the shadows to explore our once familiar, illuminated settings in new ways. The discoveries made through these careful probings can be profound and transformative, but they can also challenge our physical and emotional resilience, compelling us to dig for the energy and positivity needed to stay balanced. Fortunately, at times like these, our herbal allies are there to help!

A fantastic scrub butter like Neroli or Awapuhi leaves the skin feeling moisturized, exfoliated, and loved—these body scrubs are a wonderful way to practice self care! However, for some people (like me), salt- and sugar-based body scrubs aren’t as ideal. No matter how gentle I am, the intensity of salts and sugars rubbed into my skin always leaves me feeling like I lost some epidermis that I actually wanted to keep. This has become truer as I’ve aged. Exfoliation is important for happy skin, but I want a gentler touch these days… which explains my recent quest to perfect a DIY “microderm” body scrub that does a good job, but dials back some of the scrubbing fierceness of sugars and salts.