you need:
1/4 cup shelled, raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup oatmeal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vitamin E oil

to do:
1. Grind the seeds and the oats in a food processor or coffee grinder. Grind until you have a consistency of whole-wheat flour.
2. Add the spices and vitamin E; mix well.
3. Store in an airtight container until ready to use. This makes about 4 ounces, which is enough for one bath. Pour the mixture into a warm bath. If you don’t want particles to clean up following the bath, you can place this in a muslin/cotton sachet to float in the water.
4. I like to use this as a scrub too when taking showers. Scrub this onto your skin like you would a salt or sugar scrub; then rinse with warm water.

Take time for yourselves mamas and remember to breath.

Recipe altered a bit from Janice Cox’s Natural Beauty from the Garden.

Hardly! Can you tell what they were made from? Here’s a hint- fluffy and soft, little ones (and big ones) like to make wishes on them……

Yep, milkweed pods! These were so easy to make! We pulled the dry pods from the plants; pull carefully with the stem intact, it makes the perfect mouse tail! The pods should already be naturally split in half to make the little mouse body. We didn’t take the pods with a lot of seeds because we want more milkweed in our field, we’ll harvest those after the seeds are gone, or you could just blow the seeds away in the breeze of course.

The little ladies used Sharpie markers to draw the eyes, ears and pink noses. That’s it! Araina even drew little hearts on the inside of the pods. We now have many little mice scampering about……….

Good thing our mighty hunter sleeps a lot!

We will probably hang these cuties on our Yule tree in December, but right now they are very fun little natural toys!

 What you need:

vinegar for plant dyes

salt for berry dyes

 water

stainless steel pots- VERY IMPOTANT or a chemical reaction can occur with the color

 cloth or fibers- light colored wool, cotton, silk or muslin works best for natural dyes

cheesecloth or coffee filter

strainer

plant material- flowers should be in full bloom, nuts mature, and berries ripe

Before dyeing the fibers you must soak them in a fixative in order for the dye to “stick”:

Berry dye fixative: 1/2 cup salt to 8 cups cold water

Plant dye fixative: 4 parts cold water to 1 part vinegar

Directions for fixative: Add the fabric to the fixative mixture and simmer for an hour; then rinse the fabric in cold water and ring out excess water.

Making the dye bath: While the fabric is soaking in the fixative prepare the dye bath. Chop up the plant material and place in a pan. Add the water by doubling the amount of water to plant material. I used a lot of water for the walnuts because they make such a strong dark dye. Bring the water to a boil, then simmer for about a  half hour to an hour, depending on how potent you want the dye. 

Dyeing the fabric: Strain plant material from the water. I found out the hard way that you should use cheesecloth or a coffee filter to catch little bits of plant material that go through the strainer. Add the fabric (while still wet from the fixative soak) to the dye bath. Simmer the fabric in the bath until the desired color is obtained. Keep in mind that the fabric will be lighter once it is rinsed and dry. After obtaining preferred color, rinse in cold water until water is clear. Hang to dry (don’t ya love the 1970′s brick fireplace with brass guard?).

The results are so pretty! The goldenrod (left) stained the wool a light creamy yellow color; the walnut stained the wool a beautiful brown with a chestnut tint. I’m planning on staining more wool with the walnut bath so I can make wool trees for the little ladies’ holiday gifts. Araina wants to make a leaf garland and Fauna wants to make a gathering bag with both colors of the stained wools. ****Note- all dyed fabric should be laundered separately in cold water.

You can do this natural dyeing  process with any plants you find in your yard. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different plants to get different colors. Plantain and grass would probably make a pretty green color. I was thinking about trying leaf litter too. Have fun experimenting and if you do this please let me know how it turned out!

Note on the pokeberries- last year we used pokeberries to dye some wool and it came out a beautiful pink color. This year I simmered the berries in a  NON-stainless steel pot (I used a large pot for canning) and the beautiful magenta berry color turned pale yellow, which is disappointing when you wanted pink! So I didn’t post that one. But learn from my mistakes and use stainless steel! Hopefully our now green pokeberries that are growing in the backyard will ripen before more nights of frost occur.

For you science lovers out there- learn about the chemical bonding of dyeing fabric here and to learn more about the different types of bonds go here. Enjoy!

To make a pendant you need: acorn caps (the really big Burr Oak acorn caps work great because they are so big, but any acorn cap will do), Tacky glue (school glue shrinks too much as it dries), dried and/or pressed plants and flowers, hemp cording, hand drill and eye screws (optional). To make them, fill the cap with glue and place your chosen treasure in the glue before it dries. Set it aside upright to dry for a few days.

The glue tends to shrink as it dries and pulls the pressed flowers inside the cap a little. You could always put a little pebble into the cap before filling it with glue, then add the glue and gently place the pressed flower on top. The pendants that worked the best for us are the ones with the flower heads stuffed into the glue. Calendula, bergamot, and red clover blossoms are our favorite pendants. Stuffing the cap with lavender, feverfew and chamomile worked nicely too. We made our herb pendants scented by adding a couple drops of lavender essential oil to the flowers after the glue dried. 

After the glue dries attach the pendant to the cording. Here, I drilled holes using a hand drill and screwed in eye screws found at any hardware store.

Another way to attach the cording is to leave the stem on and tie the cording around it.  Dab a little glue onto the knot to enforce the hold.

Araina’s favorite acorn pendant has a red clover inside! Enjoy!

Raindrops on the Lady’s Mantle,

Raindrops on the Pine,

Raindrops on the Apple Blossoms doing just fine,

Raindrops on the Lamb’s Ear,

Raindrops on the Seeds,

Raindrops on the Lilies,

But not on Me!