Homemade Potpourri>>>

Sometimes your house smells and you need a quick cover up. Most commercial air fresheners are bad for your health as well as for the environment. If guest are coming over in a little while and you still haven’t found the source of the smell in your home and can’t eliminate it, there are some environmentally friendly ways to temporarily cover it up and lift your spirits too.

Boiling tricks. Boiling cinnamon sticks, lemon leaves, orange leaves, lemon rinds, orange rinds, grapefruit rinds, mints, herbs, vanilla, or cloves in water is a good way to cover up odors, help a home smell welcoming and lift your mood, as well as your guests mood. The good thing about boiling something like cinnamon sticks is that once boiled you can also drink it as tea, leaving your house with a cinnamon smells and your taste buds with the cinnamon flavor. Share some tea with your guests. If the boiled water isn’t good for tea you can use it as a facial steam to pamper your skin before your guest arrive or let the water cool down and then pour it in your garden.

Homemade potpourri. Store bought potpourri is usually sprayed with synthetic perfumes and dyes that are not natural and make it smell too sweet, too strong or repugnant. Natural homemade potpourri smells better, is healthier and more environmentally friendly.

There are various way to make potpourri with a variety of ingredients. For example, you can have a citrus smelling potpourri or a rose smelling potpourri.

One semi-quick way to make potpourri is to grab older fruit from your fridge, slice the fruit up into slices place them on a cookie sheet. Place them in the oven set at about 170 degrees F for a few hours while you clean up the place. Turn the slices over about every hour. When dried, place the dried fruit in a jar. You can add dried flowers, pinecones, cinnamon sticks or cloves to the batch and then sprinkle with essential oils of your choice. Close the jar and then open it when guest arrive.