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.

Simple syrups are a fun and surprisingly useful ingredient to keep on hand in your refrigerator, especially when they are infused with your favorite herbs. A lot of people think of mocktails or cocktails when they think of simple syrups, and that’s definitely a good use for them. But they are equally wonderful added to carbonated water, as sweetener in tea, brushed on cakes or cupcakes, drizzled on yogurt or pancakes, and more. They are called “simple” syrup for a reason—if you can boil water, you can make simple syrup. And infusing simple syrups with herbs takes them from being a good ingredient to an amazing one! 

My youngest son loves ramen: both the hand-pulled noodle restaurant version and the instant kind. His passion for instant ramen is left over from his first foray, years ago, into the adult world of supporting himself on minimum wage. Thankfully, as he’s matured, he’s become more concerned about eating real food without the MSG, tBHQ, and astronomically high sodium content that is typical in grocery store ramen. But quick easy ramen is still the food he reaches for when he’s in a hurry and needs a fast meal… which explains my quest to develop an easy, healthy, homemade bouillon powder/paste that he can add to his noodle bowls in place of those unhealthy flavor packets that come in store-bought instant ramen noodles.

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.

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) a plant highly praised in the Ayurvedic tradition, is in the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family. It’s been said that the herb may give both energy and calmness to those plagued with physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. The species name somnifera means sleep-inducing, whereas ashwagandha comes from the Sanskrit words “ashva” and “gandha,” meaning “horse smell” since some think the roots of this calming plant smell like a horse. To each their own in the smell department; however, being a trophorestorative herb, it can bring “horselike” strength and vitality when used consistently over time.  Ashwagandha has also been known to have a positive effect on cortisol levels due to real and perceived stress triggers and their subsequent physical and emotional symptoms. With stress being a way of life for many, the release of stress may also result in increased vigor and energy.

In the cycle of the year, I find the weeks between Imbolc (February) and Beltane (end of April) to be a precious, restful time in which I finally have space to be creative. We’re past the months of food preserving and winter holidays and not yet at the point when I will jump back into the annual joy/work of my yard, garden, and orchard. This is the only time of the year when I don’t have a dozen other priorities vying for my attention. It is an ideal moment to take a look at my apothecary and think about the herbs that I should use up before they start to get old. As well as making tinctures, glycerine extracts, and infused honey, I find this to be a perfect opportunity to make herb-infused spirits to add to my liquor cabinet for handcrafted cocktails throughout the year. I recently combed back through Mountain Rose Herbs blogs for inspiration, and—as usual—came up with infusion gold. I’m excited to share three reader-tested, herb-infused distilled spirits recipes with you!

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.

I have to admit, it was really difficult for me to believe that soap nuts could actually work. My skepticism caused me to walk by them at my local natural grocery store for years. I liked the idea of an all-natural laundry solution, but I figured soap nuts would not be effective enough to take on the heavily soiled laundry from homesteading and an overall active lifestyle. 

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. 

Over the years, I’ve fallen in love with many herbs. Some come and go, others stick with me day after day once they’ve become part of my life. This nourishing infusion blend weaves together four of my long-term herbal allies. As a go-to for drinking daily, it is beloved by many in my extended community.