Treat yourself or someone you love to a spa-scented shower experience with easy-to-create “Shower Steamer” tablets. Shower steamers use all-natural salts (typically baking soda) and essential oils. These little aromatherapy pucks can turn your shower into a spa-like experience. It is a simple product made up of just a few household ingredients and your favorite essential oils. The tablets dissolve slowly as you shower to create a lasting aromatherapy experience and the warm steam helps diffuse the scent. You can select scents that will energize, relax, or help with seasonal congestion.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t like to waste. When you enjoy herbal preparations as part of your daily routine, you are bound to wind up with a stockpile of perfectly good containers that can still be used. But how can you make sure they are cleaned well enough to reuse, and how can you continue to put them to use time and time again? Here are some tips and tricks to help you keep those bottles in circulation.

Many people want to get away from conventional hair and skin care products for two important reasons; they are full of unpronounceable synthetic ingredients that make it nearly impossible to know what we’re rubbing all over our bodies, and those over-the-counter products are packaged in materials that often can’t be reused or recycled. A lot of us first came to herbalism looking for natural, DIY alternatives. But in regard to skin and hair care formulations, it’s often not so simple.

At Mountain Rose Herbs, we talk a lot about the importance of labeling homemade herbal remedies, essential oil blends, and the other handcrafted goods that we put in our apothecaries and gift to our loved ones. Proper labeling makes at-a-glance identification easy, ensures we have appropriate dosage information, and helps us keep track of the age of our formulations. On a purely practical level, it also makes it easier to avoid having a cupboard full of unused mystery bottles. We may think we will never forget what we put in that tincture, tea, or aromatherapy blend, or we may have the best intentions of making a label and writing helpful notes later. But then life happens, and we put it off. So there we are weeks or months after, realizing we can no longer remember the exact proportions or even which tincture is which. We have all been there and done that.

Alcohol-based perfumes never sounded attractive to me. I always thought using them would make me smell like I just came from the bar, which is generally not the vibe I am going for. This aversion persisted until I discovered tonka beans (Dipteryx odorata) and learned that alcohol extraction is the best way to bring out their dreamy aroma! Tonka beans are an excellent alternative to vanilla beans in aromatherapy creations and are roughly five times less expensive than vanilla, so you can save your true vanilla for cooking and use tonka beans to get those highly coveted notes for perfumery.

When it comes to hair care, a routine of deep conditioning can make a huge difference in the health and appearance of your hair and scalp. Choosing the right oils is one of the key parts of this process, so I have broken down some of my favorite oils for hair care and shared a luscious hot oil treatment that I formulated for weekly use. 

In our continuing study of phytochemistry, let’s advance further with Polysaccharides. Studies show the many benefits of polysaccharides. They are immune modulating which means they help the immune system to regulate itself, whether stimulating or suppressing its actions. Polysaccharides stimulate the parasympathetic action to produce mucous, our body’s natural demulcent, to soothe dry, irritated tissues and assist in elimination. Contained in the primary cell walls of plants, polysaccharides act as a prebiotic, as most fiber does, to support beneficial bacteria and decrease non-beneficial bacteria. Serving as a soluble fiber, polysaccharides slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream as they enter the gut and bind bile acids. Bile acids then leave the body through the digestive system. Polysaccharides also prevent the absorption of cholesterol from food in the gastrointestinal tract and relieve constipation. 

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.

When you are planning an event, especially one as large as a wedding, there are many things to consider: budget, theme, comfort and, hopefully, sustainability. When it comes to party favors, I’m a big fan of gifting homemade things that are clean, green, and most importantly, useful!

Distilled from the twigs and bark of the witch hazel tree, high quality, organic witch hazel extract is a lovely, time-tested ingredient in DIY and natural deodorant sprays. Witch hazel lowers the skin’s pH, so odor-causing bacteria cannot thrive. It is gentle enough to be used alone, or can be combined with herbs and essential oils. It also does double-duty as a toner, which is why you see it show up so often in the finest facial toner recipes. These Mountain Rose Herbs deodorant spray recipes bring together the superpowers of witch hazel with balanced blends of aromatic essential oils—it’s no wonder they have been favorite go-to recipes for more than a decade! And, once you have the hang of these easy homemade sprays, you can customize the recipe to create a perfectly blended scent for yourself or your loved ones.