Make Your Own Holiday Potpourri!
November 14, 2018
It’s the time of year when kitchens fill homes with sweet holiday smells from baking gingerbread cookies, to cinnamon and cloves, mingled with orange and other fragrant spices. If you’re not baking fragrant desserts and sides yet, here are a few ideas that will fill your space with the smell of holiday potpourri.
Make Your Own Holiday Potpourri
Our sense of smell is closely linked with memory and one reason we might relish holiday fragrances is that they remind us of special moments from yesteryear. Little wonder that we’re eager to recreate the aromas and the memories we love so much!
This holiday potpourri video tutorial at Half-Baked Harvest shows you how a handful of ingredients, like fresh cranberries, ginger and tangerines with whole cinnamon sticks, and a sprig of pine can turn your stove top into a bubbling smells of deliciousness. Blogger Tieghan throws in a vanilla bean and apple cider plus a little water and simmers a pot of the stuff on her cooktop. Not counting a run to the grocery store for ingredients (there are more than we mentioned so get the recipe!), it won’t take more than five minutes before your homemade holiday potpourri starts permeating all of your air space!
Savory Experiments substitutes a few things – like rosemary springs for the pine, and a splash of red wine for the apple cider. Blogger Jessica fills a large pot half-way to the brim with water and then adds the rest of her aromatic goodies for a slightly savory version of stovetop potpourri.
Essential Holiday Room Sprays
Tasty Yummies goes all out with holiday room sprays – and will even share free downloadable labels for your concoctions so you can customize exactly what you want. And if you’re feeling industrious, you can turn this DIY project into multiple holiday gifts for the holidays. The Sprouts Farmers Market on E. Briarwood in Aurora carries lots of essential oils and the other things you’ll need, like:
- Glass spray bottles. Blogger Beth uses clean 4-ounce bottles with a fine-mist setting. The glass part is important because essential oils can dissolve plastic.
- Two ounces of distilled water.
- One ounce of alcohol; vodka will do. Alcohol isn’t essential, but it makes your spray last longer.
- Essential oils.
Download a printable recipe list from One Essential Community of 25 essential holiday room sprays which add witch hazel or Epsom salt to the mixtures to keep the oils emulsified in water. Blogger Sarah loves bringing the wonderful smells of the holidays into her home with all-natural (chemical and toxin-free) sprays that are easy to make and economical to use!
Beth offers recipes for 30 holiday room sprays including Winter Wonderland, a blend of pine, peppermint and wintergreen; O Christmas Tree, a combination of pine, cypress, eucalyptus, cedarwood, orange and cinnamon and Home for the Holidays, with nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, clove and cedarwood.
Holiday Alert in Southshore!
The holidays are fast approaching in the master-planned community of Southshore, where the weeks fly by and take us to the end of the year all too soon! Take a tour through the amazing models from Toll Brothers, Richmond American Homes or Century Communities in ranch and two-story designs and ask about quick move-ins. You’ll find the lakeside home of your dreams, priced between the upper $300s and the $700s.