DIY

Whether you’re looking to save a few bucks or just putting a DIY spin on this holiday season, making your own gifts can be a great idea.  In addition to saving you money, they’re full of love, time, and thoughtfulness, and the recipient nearly always appreciates the extra effort that goes into such a gift.  You can also control the ingredients, so you know that you’re giving your recipient a gift that aligns with his or her (or your!) values, be it organic, animal-friendly, fair trade, or something else.&n

Autumn is a fantastic time for nature-based crafts. With all the natural materials falling from the trees, there is a plethora of creative opportunities. Fallen leaves especially lend themselves to crafting projects. Take a walk with your family, collecting the fallen leaves you find along the way, and then use them to try out the crafts described below.

Leaf Prints

You need leaves, paper, paint brushes, and your choice of paints. I suggest tempera for younger crafters.

With cold and flu season upon us, it's important to focus on something we normally forget about: Waste. Being sick produces a lot of waste, from tissues to throat drop wrappers. All of this waste heads directly to a landfill where it will sit for decades. Here are three ways to have a low waste sick season without hurting the environment. 

It does not take a lot of glitter to make craft time special. You can source many fantastic crafting materials both from the recycling bin and the outdoors! When you are looking to stimulate your child’s imagination in the outdoors, these crafts can help you out.

Fall is here, which means crisp weather and plenty of fall produce. Why spend autumn indoors when you could be outside? Here are 10 ways to enjoy fall by heading outdoors. 

Those long, warm summer nights are dwindling.  The sun is setting earlier in the evening; there’s a welcome coolness to the morning air.  But before you swap out all your summer recipes for pumpkin-spiced everything, there’s one last summer chore you should take care of: cleaning the grill.

Have you ever used rose water?  Divine, isn’t it?  Real rose water—one of the most popular cosmetics in the world—is technically a hydrosol, a scented water produced by distillation of fresh rose petals.  Distillation is when you use steam to extract plant components, especially scented components.  Hydrosols&nbsp

I always say that my favorite way to use medicinal mushrooms is to eat them.  Sometimes we need stronger mushroom medicine or are working with one that isn’t edible (ever tried biting into Reishi?).  In these instances, concentrated mushroom powders are a great way to go.

There’s little better than fresh lavender, whether as an essential oil, an herb for cooking, in a fresh bouquet, or, my personal favorite, growing abundantly on a local farm.

Bitters hold their history in old European herbal medicinal traditions and used to serve the same purposes that tinctures do today. Tinctures are herbal extractions made by steeping dried or fresh herbs in a highly pure form of alcohol. Any part of the plant can be used to make tinctures, although some parts may render different effects than others. Commercial processes use ethyl alcohol, but for home crafted tinctures, 100 proof vodka is the best choice.