Score! Another easy DIY Christmas gift...or new item to stock in your own pantry. DIY flavoured salts. Just about every time we make our own potato wedges, we'll sprinkle them with salt, pepper, garlic and thyme. These premixed salts just mean all your flavours are pre-bottled and ready to go.

Here's what you need:
Salt. I used rock salt, Himalayan rock salt would be even better
Dried herbs. You could start with whatever you've got in the pantry. I used sage, thyme and mixed herbs
Garlic granules
Essential oils (make sure they're certified pure therapeutic grade) If you want to order great quality oils, contact me here https://www.mydoterra.com/rachealcameron/#/ 
If you just don't want to use essential oils at all, try dried citrus zest.
Glass jars. Got empty herb and spice jars? Perfect. Otherwise small glass jars and bottles work nicely.

Some combos to try:
Orange-Sage Salt (for Poultry, pork and potatoes)
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp dried sage
5 drops orange essential oil (once again, make sure the bottle says it's safe to ingest!)

Mix ingredients in a bowl and use a funnel to neatly pour into your chosen bottle. Easy, hey?

Lemon-Thyme Salt (for fish, poultry, lamb and potatoes)
1/2 cup salt
iTbsp dried thyme
5 drops lemon essential oil

Ditto...mix your ingredients, and pour into your glass jar

Chilli-Lime Salt (if you like hot food, you could use this on just about anything!)
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp chilli flakes (not for the faint hearted!)
5 drops Lime essential oil.

Mix and bottle, as with the other recipes.

Garlic-Herb-Lime Salt (great on potatoes, but also works on any chosen meat)
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp dried mixed herbs
1 tsp garlic granules or powdered garlic
5 drops Lime Essential oil

Mix and bottle! And maybe add a pretty label too :-)

To use, just sprinkle on your potatoes or meat before roasting...or on your served meal before eating (ie some lemon-thyme salt over your spaghetti bolognase)

 Love upcycling? And making versatile and inexpensive Christmas gifts? Maybe you could try DIY chalk boards.
It's very simple.
To start with, I go op shopping. See, this is fun already :-) You're looking for timber frames in good nick. I look for timber because they're easier to paint and sand back...to customise. Often I'll pay $2 each for decent sized frames.

Chances are you have some acrylic paint around the house, but if you don't, then try the mis-tint section of your local hardware store. I've often found pretty colours at $1 or $2 for a 250ml sample pot. Even children's acrylic paints will work.

Now, I'm very sorry but weebly seems to refuse to let me load my own images on the blog most of the time. Not sure why. So though I took some pics of some homemade examples, I can't load them! So I have example pics from elsewhere.

Over time, for the writing surface, we've tried both homemade chalk paint, and just using regular acrylic paint that's been primed with a dusty duster as the chalkboard base. Both have worked.

Homemade chalkboard paint is this: 1 cup acrylic paint to 2Tbsp extra fine tile grout. Then it needs to be blended VERY well. A stab blender does the job fairly well, but you've still got to look out for little lumps.

More recently I've just taken the timber backing out of the frame (discarded the glass), painted it with black children's acrylic, let it dry, and then wiped a dusty duster over it to prep it for writing on. And like previously mentioned, this has worked fine.

For the frame itself, there are many options. But a quick and effective choice, is to paint the frame with your chosen colour, let it dry, and then take some sandpaper and rub back some of the edges to get that rustic farmhouse effect.

And that's pretty much it! You could get very creative and try all sorts of paint effects and such if desired.
My sister uses her homemade chalk board for her shopping list. I have several, mostly with scriptures written on them throughout the house. They're also great as 'slates' for learner writers to practice.
Some people use them to display the daily/weekly menu for the household...so many options.
Have fun!
Racheal

 A beautiful book by Doug Purdie, a rooftop beekeeper in Sydney. Even if you have no interest in keeping bees, this gorgeously presented book is an eye opener into providing a habitat to encourage and protect our bee population and therefore protect our supply of fresh produce and plant life.
A blog with more detail lies here... birdsongmarketgarden.com.au/2016/10/23/the-bee-friendly-garden/

They're nothing new. Essential oils have been used therapeutically and ceremonially for thousands of years. You may have heard how things like oil of myrrh were used in Egyptian embalming processes? Or how the Biblical anointing oils were enhanced with oils like cassia, galbanum, and frankincense.

But recently there's a lot of talk about essential oils, and yesterday at Simple Living we held a class to discuss how these oils can be used therapeutically, in cleaning products, and in beauty products. We also talked about the difference in quality of essential oils.

So some of the most basic things you need to know about essential oils are these facts:

-Essential oils should always come in a glass, darkly coloured (amber or cobalt usually) bottle. If they are in plastic, or regular clear glass, don't buy them.

-The oils need to be kept out of direct sunlight and away from heat.

-In Australia, and other western nations, there no real legislation for quality control on essential oils. A company can say '!00% pure essential oil' on the bottle, and yet have as little as 10% essential oil in there, with the rest of the liquid being made up of carrier oils, fillers or chemical counterfeits of the oil. Price is generally a good indicator. If the oil is very cheap, it's probably because the real oil is not what's filling the bottle! $2 bottles at discount stores are a good example of this. There is no way you can produce real quality therapeutic grade oil for $2 a bottle!

-There are several companies that produce quality, therapeutic grade oil that I know of. One is doTerra, whose oils we sampled at the class and another is Young Living.

-When choosing a diffuser, look for one that is ultrasonic. Candle powered oil burners heat the oil too high to maintain the therapeutic quality of the oil.

-It takes a lot of raw material to make an essential oil. For example, about 12,000 rose petals make up a little bottle of rose oil. This is part of why true oils are costly.

-Essential oil molecules are tiny, usually around 300amu. They penetrate your skin and within 20 minutes of applying them can reach every cell in your body.

-Decent essential oil companies will source their raw materially sustainably, and from a area where the plant thrives and grows well naturally. They will also harvest at the optimum time to ensure the best quality oil. They will also not use chemicals on the crops, as they will end up in the oil if they do.

-Essential oils statistically are very safe. They need to be kept out of eyes and ears and used sparingly internally, but compared with a lot of other medications out there, they're harmless.

Due to the high levels of cleansing properties in true essential oils, they are wonderful for cleaning products. Great news if you have sensitised to commercial cleaning products or concerned about the damage they could be doing to your body.
One example is a Clove Mold Spray. Clove is highly anti-fungal and mold can't stand it!
All you need to do is mix 1 cup of vinegar with 5-10 drops of clove essential oil in a glass spray bottle. You can either use an old glass maple syrup bottle or get some from glassbottlesdirect.cart.net.au/epages/glassbottlesdirect.sf/en_AU/?ObjectPath=/Shops/glassbottlesdirect/Categories/CosmeticAroma

At the class we also tried some essential oil cooking.
The Black Bean Brownie Recipe can be found here doterra.com/US/en/blog/recipe-black-bean-brownies
And the Olive, Feta and Rosemary dip recipe- www.do-essential-oils.com/en/recipes/feta-olive-spread
That blog that the black bean brownie recipe came from has loads of other free recipes, both food and cleaning/beauty that you can make up with your essential oils.

Over the years, we have tried essential oils on many different wounds and conditions. We've also used them on our animals (sheep and chickens...and even to control lice on our pigs when we used to have pigs). The success rate is high. There's not often a time we use the oils and don't solve whatever the problem we're facing is.

Particularly with a large family, we find the oils such a valuable first aid kit to have on hand. Some oils even stop bleeding! Once my eldest son accidentally swung a maddock into his younger brothers face. It wasn't pretty. But the bleeding lip was quickly fixed with helichrysum oil!

If you would like to know more, want to order some Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade oils, or want to find out how to get your own wholesale account for ordering your own oils, you can contact me (Racheal) through www.mydoterra.com/rachealcameron/#/

It's on again! The 2016 Homeschool Markets.
Saturday October 15th, from 8am-1pm at 13-15 Blake St, Wilsonton, 4350.
This year we'll have a food and fellowship focus. A variety of the stores will create a cafe atmosphere and gluten free/dairy free people will be catered for also! Heritage Bank are loaning us 3 little marquees so we can have a shaded area for people to come along and enjoy a bite to eat while connecting with other locals.

Shiralee from our Simple Living group will be there with her beautiful vintage paper creations.

Lorri, who some of you know from SLT will have her lovely preserves and some sewing.

There'll be woodwork items from one of our local homeschool boys.

Laura, from WhenLauraMeetsClay will have her gorgeous polymer clay creations and fairy gardens (SO cute!)

Tash from MadeByTash will have her scrapbooking dye-cuts, cards and will also be running the espresso machine on the day :-)

I'll have a table with homemade soaps, candles and essential oils.

Local artist, Rosemary Williamson will be there advertising her painting classes. Rosemary does a lot of prophetic art, which is stunning.

We'll have a smoothie stand, lemonade stand, sausage sizzle (GF bread available for those who need it), cake shop and more.

Come along for a enjoyable morning of checking out some local products and catching up with friends!

What have they all in common?
Well, a common pest in beehives, is the Small Hive Beetle. I got to see one in the flesh today, and it's days are numbered. If you're wondering why these beetles are a pest, they lay their nasty little maggots in the hives...in the comb. Nobody wants maggots in their honey.

Usually the small Hive Beetle is trapped or squashed...but wouldn't it be better just to deter the nasty pests altogether?

Being an essential oil junkie, I was very pleased to read that Wintergreen essential oil (and I'm talking pure Therapeutic grade, not the inferior grades that could contain toxins that will affect the bees) is very effective at repelling hive beetles. And it doesn't take much of it either. One part Wintergreen to sixteen parts carrier oil (we're using coconut oil) is said to be the ideal ratio to repel the beetles without doing any harm to the bees.

So we only just got our bees yesterday. Not even 24 hours later, we found hive beetles trying to move into the hive! Rick's considering buying traps as well, but I'm very keen to see how the wintergreen oil goes. I've seen essential oils work for all sorts of ailments on both humans and animals, so why not insects?
For anyone wanting to try this, here's the procedure:
Take 1ml of good quality Wintergreen essential oil
https://www.mydoterra.com/rachealcameron/#/
(you can contact me through the above link if you want to get or find out more about top quality wintergreen oil)
In a ziplock bag or a flat bottomed plate, mix that 1ml wintergreen with 16ml of carrier oil. I'm using coconut, but you can use olive or canola. Do not make the blend any more concentrated than this. Add more carrier oil if anything.
Now, take a cardboard coaster and soak it in this oil blend. After a few hours, or even overnight, you can remove the coaster and place it above the frames in your hive. The scent should repel all the small hive beetles, but not bother the bees.
Sorry I don't have a pic of the hive beetles, but it rained all day and I wasn't game to take the camera outside!
I'll try and give a progress report in a week or so when we can see how effective this repellent is.
Racheal