Front Door Decor From Yard Waste?

A quick post today about using what you have, and making the most of it. :)

Here in Southern Ontario this week we had a few absolutely beautiful weather days that broke records for high temps in November.  Naturally I had to get out to the yard to play clean up and get ready for the snow to fly.

I was clipping back a rogue grape vine that was threatening to take over a rose of sharon, and removing some low corkscrew willow branches that have been whacking me in the face every time I walk throught the gate, and then I got to thinking.

I don't like sending all this stuff out to the curb.  Isn't this really the exact materials that I pay big bucks for at Michaels?  How silly!

One of the grape vines I clipped came with a lovely cluster of grapes attached and I decided to see about making it into a fall wreath for our front door.  

I simply twisted and wrapped the vine, and willow branches together.  

There isn't any wire at all, no glue, nothing.

It's all from the back yard, and was all destined for yard waste, but look at how pretty it is!

I did clip a few bits from a cedar shrub as well as a boxwood, and they are just tucked right in.  

The grape cluster is still attached as it grew on the vine.  

I even added a few drops of essential oils to the vine, just for fun.

Now when people come my door they can snack on organic red grapes, and smell balsam fir.

I challenge you, if you have a yard, to do a bit of clean-up this weekend and see what you can come up with for absolutely FREE!

I am a Young Living Independent Distributor, which means I buy my essential oils at the wholesale price rather than the retail price. I save 24% off retail, receive discounted shipping, and can earn free products through the Essential Rewards program as well as the ability to earn commissions. 

If you would like to become an Independent Distributor, I would love to sponsor you!  You can click HERE and enter 2066298 in the “Sponsor  and Enroller ID” boxes. 

I am always happy to answer any questions!  

Email me at thepureoil@gmail.com

Using essential oils effectively in the kitchen, and a recipe for a savory blend

This time of year I love getting back to making hearty meals for my family and cooking with the oven and crock pot again. 

One of the things I've really loved since getting started with Young Living Essential Oils is that I can use them to season food, because many of them are safe for ingestion.

 I will caution you that if you are using drug-store or health food store available essential oils, please DO NOT use them in your meals.  They are not pure enough to be safe for ingestion!  Brands sold at health food stores and drug stores are generally labelled NOT SAFE for internal use, and that is with good reason.  

Unless you know the brand you are using is GRAS (Generally regarded as safe) for consumption, please just enjoy the scent, as you would any air freshener. 

Now, since I know my  oils are safe to take internally, I immediately started experimenting with them in the kitchen...with not the greatest of results if I'm being totally honest.
It was a colossal disappointment in the beginning.  


You must remember when working with essential oils that they are potent almost beyond imagination.  It took me a few failed attempts to accept this fact, and then I realized that this was actually GREAT news!  

I came up with a very dilute (read COST EFFECTIVE) blend that is an exceptional flavouring when used in savory dishes!  Because you only use a few drops of each essential oil in the blend, and it makes 15 mL of oil (approximately 300 drops) which is used by the drop to flavour your meals,
it's super cheap!
That's my kind of cooking!!!

You can use any kind of cooking oil you prefer to use in your kitchen as the base, or  carrier oil for the blend.  I decided to go with Liquid Coconut Oil only because we're heading into winter here in Ontario, and my kitchen gets chilly.  The EVOO that I might have selected for this use will get too thick for it to easily drip out of the bottles drop reducer, and I don't want to be bothered with a warm water bath before using each time.

If you're in a warmer climate, I'd probably go with Extra Virgin Olive Oil as the base.

I have yet to make a pretty little label, but this is the only unlabelled bottle on my shelf, and the scent identifies it.  :)  I will put a little label on though, in the event the boys will want to use it when they make their eggs. 

This is very flexible, and can totally be tailored to the flavors you are most partial to.  

Want my recipe?

Here's what's in my little bottle of home cookin' savory oil:

In a 15 mL re-purposed essential oil bottle I added the following:
5 drops Rosemary EO
4 drops Basil EO
3 drops Thyme EO
2 drops Marjoram EO
1 drop Oregano EO
1 drop Taste of Italy blend EO (this was a promotional oil I got free months ago, but it's heavy on the oregano again, so if you don't have it, you could do two drops of Oregano instead)

Top up the bottle with your choice of carrier oil and shake well.  Allow it to sit for a day or two before using for best results.  This blend will keep indefinitely if you keep it in a coolish and darker place.  I find it is excellent for use in soups, stews, gravies, pasta dishes, with cabbage rolls, or any ground meat dishes, and even salad dressings!  

(my bottle was a YL Lemon essential oil bottle, all cleaned up and well dried in the oven to ensure there was no water droplets left inside)

Give oils a try in your kitchen, and let me know how they work for you!

I am a Young Living Independent Distributor, which means I buy my essential oils at the wholesale price rather than the retail price. I save 24% off retail, receive discounted shipping, and can earn free products through the Essential Rewards program as well as the ability to earn commissions. 

If you would like to become an Independent Distributor, I would love to sponsor you!  You can click HERE and enter 2066298 in the “Sponsor  and Enroller ID” boxes. 

I am always happy to answer any questions!  

Email me at thepureoil@gmail.com

Who came first; the chicken, or the egg?

I'll be honest up front.  I have no idea who came first.  My hypothesis is that the chicken came first, but I really can't prove it. If it was the egg, then who cared for it to be able to develop and hatch into the chicken?  AND, 50% of eggs will hatch into ROOSTERS...which raises a whole other issue!  My stance on the issue is that a chicken and a rooster came first.  Otherwise things just don't add up according to my math.

Anyway, regardless of how the whole thing got started, look at this array of eggs I found in nest boxes at the farm, all within a few days of each other!  Am I the only one who gets excited about finding perfect eggs of all different sizes?  (Don't tell me if I am.  It's like Easter morning every time I go out and collect eggs.  Who knew the Easter Bunny works all year?)

Dont' they just make you smile?

Here they are, all lined up pretty.  

Do you want to see what was inside them?

The largest two were double yolkers.  

They made some lovely Gluten Free "Huffs Puffs"

I will have to do a post with that recipe on My Gluten Free Blog

I didn't crack open the regular sized one, because I didn't have a need for it this day. 

You can see the super dark yolk in the peewee egg.  

It could be that this was a pullet's first egg. 

(So exciting!)

Want to see a close up of the double yolks?

My lighting left a bit to be desired.  These yolks were lovely and dark and rich.  

Absolutely delicious huffs puffs I tell you!

And how about a look at the wee fairy egg up close?

When I cook up these eggs I will often use a drop of my savory essential oil blend that I keep in the kitchen.  It's a well diluted blend, and I'll have that recipe up in the next day or two. 

It is linked up HERE.

I'd also like to add that because these are free range eggs, and the best I've found, nothing goes to waste!  I wash out the shells, dry them in the oven and crush them.  Then they get stored in a canning jar and used a variety of ways.  Post to come next week!

What to do with egg shells?  Click HERE.

I hope you enjoyed my egg-stravaganza here. 

(sooo cheesy, sorry!)

I am a Young Living Independent Distributor, which means I buy my essential oils at the wholesale price rather than the retail price. I save 24% off retail, receive discounted shipping, and can earn free products through the Essential Rewards program as well as the ability to earn commissions. 

If you would like to become an Independent Distributor, I would love to sponsor you!  You can click HERE and enter 2066298 in the “Sponsor  and Enroller ID” boxes. 

I am always happy to answer any questions!  

Email me at thepureoil@gmail.com

Farm life

I have a little story to tell today.

Funny things happen when you climb out from under your rock and take a risk.

(As an aside, my daughter is big into the "And Then It Happened" series of books right now...hence my story telling style today!)

We are very blessed in our neighbourhood to have a very old homestead turned very urban small-scale farm, known as the Tilt Farm by locals, and frequented often for the purchase of fresh free range eggs sold on an honour system out of a fridge at the end of their driveway.  For years I had purchased the best eggs ever from this farm, and one day I was able to speak to the farmer, and was invited to bring kitchen scraps for the chickens and toss them over the fence.  Well, colour me a happy girl!  Now I had a reason to go more than once every week or two!  It was so much fun to toss our food waste, mostly fruit and veggie peels and stale breads over the fence and see these pretty girls so happy!

I just can't be miserable when I'm in the presence of chickens.

Fast forward about a year or two.  I noticed they had some cute little white fluffs back in a separate fenced area.  I asked about them and was told they were raising a few turkeys as well.  They had 10.

One Tuesday night in mid to late August, just before dusk I stopped by to toss our kitchen scraps over the fence for the girls, but to my surprise they had all gone in for the night already.  I had noticed the last few weeks there were fewer turkeys, and I saw the lady of the farm out to tuck in the girls, and I asked her about the turkeys.  She told me they had had difficulty with the turkeys, and that they had lost 4 of 10 and two of them were very sick now, and they were afraid they were beyond saving at this point.

And then it happened....my mouth opened to say I'd be back with the food for the chickens in the morning, so it wouldn't attract predators through the night; but it didn't stop there.  Without really thinking through how I might come across to this lovely farm lady, I went on to explain that I am a nurse, and I have recently been learning a lot about natural health care options, and especially energy medicine and essential oils.  I went so far as to ask if I could come the next day and see the sick turkeys and try some techniques that had recently worked so well for my own pets at home.

I have to give Mrs. Nancy Tilt all the credit in the world for grace under fire.  She must have thought I was crazy, since she didn't know me, and here I was asking to do what probably sounded to her like voodoo with her turkeys!   She graciously agreed to see me the next day if I decided to come by, and probably went to bed scratching her head and wondering what the heck she'd just gotten herself into.

I scurried home and got to work.  I had my sister look up some avian information for me in Dr. Melissa Shelton's Animal Desk Reference.  I WILL own this book, one day soon! (in fact, I'm working on becoming an affiliate)

I made up the avian raindrop oil blend, as well as a feather spray.  The next day I trucked over to the farm, introduced myself as the crazy lady from the night before, and she only somewhat reluctantly took me out to see the birds.

Let me just say, I made it clear I've never worked with turkeys (at least not the kind with feathers haha!) before in my life, and I really didn't know how this would work out.  If they really believed they were going to lose these two birds, I would be happy to do my best for them, and we'd just have to see what would happen.  She had come around to the idea of just trying anything, and set me up with a place to store my oil concoctions in her garage so I could come anytime to see them. It's hard to do worse than dead, so there was really nothing to lose at this point.

I started working with them on Wednesday morning.  I came twice a day.  The first time she helped me catch the turkeys for the treatment, and after that I was on my own.  But you know what?  It didn't take very long before both turkey and nurse were really looking forward to the time together, and catching the turkeys ceased to be a problem. Sadly on the Friday I missed the morning 'appointment', and we were in a horrible heat wave.  By the time I got there in the evening, one of them had passed.  I resolved not to give up, even though the other sick one was really, very poorly.  I also knew I couldn't miss a visit in that heat.

Here is my 'turkey girl' (forever known only as turkey girl, only because I had named the other one Sasha and then she died the next day.  I wasn't going to jinx turkey girl too!)    :(

You can see she has a congenital deformity of the right foot.  This made it really difficult for her to get around as she grew, so as she got bigger and had a harder time moving around, I often had to carry her in and out of the turkey house.  We grew very close, this beautiful turkey girl and I.

I understood the purpose of this mission was to get her well enough to feed people on Christmas day.  A year ago, I wouldn't have believed that I'd do this myself.  But here I was, nursing a turkey so she could fill her life's purpose.  But let me tell you something.  She lived WAY beyond her life's purpose.  This turkey girl here taught me more in the few months I worked with her before she went to the happy farm in the sky, than I could have learned in a hundred years without her.  No one at the farm could believe that she survived and was well for slaughter.  In all honesty, I think it was the worst mission accomplished of my life thus far.  But I'm processing it, and the experience has left me a much better person, and certainly more appreciative of the meals I feed my family.  I prepare them with more love and reverence for the animals who lived their lives so that I could feed my family.

In a day and age when we are so far removed from the food that we eat, I have learned so much, not only about farming, but about myself too.  In my time at the farm, I also learned how to care for the chickens, and I especially love collecting the eggs.

I will have a post soon with pictures of some eggs of various sizes, inside and out. :)  Link HERE

I am a Young Living Independent Distributor, which means I buy my essential oils at the wholesale price rather than the retail price. I save 24% off retail, receive discounted shipping, and can earn free products through the Essential Rewards program as well as the ability to earn commissions. 

If you would like to become an Independent Distributor, I would love to sponsor you!  You can click HERE and enter 2066298 in the “Sponsor  and Enroller ID” boxes. 

I am always happy to answer any questions!  

Email me at thepureoil@gmail.com