Indoor Projects: Winter Edition

Hello again, and I hope you had a great holiday. I've not gotten as many indoor projects done as I would like this year and I'm not sure about the rest of the winter as I am working on trying to de-clutter the house a little bit. I tried my hand at making an herbal salve for eczema for my friend A. Salves are really a fine, fine science to make and I'm not sure how much of my time I'll want to invest in this as Elder Forest makes such amazing salves but I gave it a try with this book. The incredients in the glass bowl are calendula and chamomile from my own herb garden and some lavender buds from a lavender farm out west.

I melted the coconut oil and beeswax in a super small crock pot for 6 hours with the herbs mixed in. Straning was a bit of a challenge and it took a couple days for it to set up. So far my testers say it's greasy, hard to the touch in the jar, and smells really strongly of the calendula, but it looks like it may indeed be helping their eczema, so we'll see.

I'm very excited about this Sensational cookie book. I got it for Christmas. I tried the recipe for peanut butter rice krispies, but I didn't have the loose peanuts the recipe called for. I think I am going to try it again only add more peanut butter, the peanuts, and put it in our pre-cut brownie pan. I also have an idea of sprinkling some chocolate chips over the mixture when it's still warm, to see if I can't make a nice chocolate-y top.

I've been kicking around this idea for a while since I can't resist collecting objects from nature. And I had this idea in mind at the Country Living Fair when I found this pair of anchor hocking wire top jars. The nice thing about them is there is no name engraved/etched/embossed on the glass so you can clearly see the contents from any angle. Some of the objects are from my garden, others were found out and about. I think there is an actual name for this kind of craft. It's not a terarrium because everything is dried, but I don't know what it's called. I gave this one as a Christmas present to a treasured work colleague. This Cabbage and Roses book is a reprint from 2003 and just a lovely decorating book to look at. It has a little bit more color than the Shabby Chic style. Although Andrew was able to helpfully point out that "no one really lives like this." Some people do, and it's more for ideas than actualy turning ones home into a magazine spread.