The Home Craft

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The Home Craft

Experiments in homemaking from scratch. Sharing recipes for DIY skincare, homemade cleaning supplies

01/03/2023

I started off the year with a new project: Signing up to be a neighborhood hub with the . I love their mission of educating people about native plants and pollinators. When you sign up to be a hub or volunteer they will send you a packet of seeds you are able to grow depending on your region and the time of year.
I got my seeds in the mail last week and took advantage of a break in the rain to do some planting today.🌱
Our local buy nothing group came through in a big way with donations of new and used pots for sprouting the seeds. I spent the day cleaning and drying the used pots yesterday to get them ready for planting.
I also stopped by and picked up a bag of their potting soil that is great for starting native seeds and some extra yarrow seeds for my own yard.
Today we planted 238 containers (about 3-5 seeds in each container). If you are local and looking to support our native pollinators and birds…I will hopefully have some free seedlings to give away in a few months!
Happy New Year, friends!

06/17/2022

🥄 🥒 I have found the secret to keeping Persian cucumbers fresh for over a week! Someone posted in a group recently that they learned from their grandma to always keep cucumbers in a bag with a spoon. This is my second time testing it out and it is a game changer! I purchased these last Saturday and they are still crisp.
They are Trader Joe’s cucumbers too, so you know it works since they rarely last longer than 24 hours! 😂
I’m so glad I found this trick because something ate all our cucumbers in the garden this year and our family goes through so many cucumbers!
I haven’t tried without the spoon…but I’m so happy it worked I don’t want to risk it!

03/18/2022

Garden update!
I’ve always been a pretty ADD gardner. I like to try things out and see what works and sometimes things die and that’s ok because it is still fun.

I’ve been reading a lot about native plants and taking classes to understand the land we live on better. There is a wealth of traditional ecological knowledge around here and I’m ashamed I haven’t started learning sooner! My goal is eventually to plant all natives in the ground and save our boxes for non-native edibles.

I’m working on pulling out most of our Mediterranean plants and anything invasive and replacing with natives and especially medicinal and edible natives. I think they are so beautiful and it is fun to see how well they do in the yard. The tiny chia I planted last week already has its first flower, I’m shocked! I did a cover crop in our boxes this fall to see how it went. I’ve been cutting it back slowly, but the peas and hairy vetch are so pretty I’m leaving some in.

My friend Jill has officially started offering her gardening services and helps me identify which weeds are native and which should be pulled, she helps to talk me through where to plant things and how big they get. I’m so excited to see what happens this year and how happy everything is already!

12/22/2021

A sweet friend gifted me some beeswax this year and it smelled so amazing, I promised to make candles and gift it back to them. I realized I have collected so much beeswax over the years, I had enough to make everyone candles for gifts this year.

I love making beeswax candles so much. I love watching the wax melt and the smell of the melted wax and the smell of the burning candles and the glow of the flame. I’m in a better mood every time I have one lit.

I had to make a few test candles of course, just to make sure they worked properly.

Adding coconut oil helps the candles to burn longer and to avoid cracks while cooling. I used refined coconut oil so the coconut smell didn’t overpower the wax like it did in my first batch. You can also add essential oils to your candles, but I love the smell of pure beeswax so much, I just left it!

Here is the super simple recipe if you want to make some.

Beeswax Candles

Ingredients:
1 lb beeswax
1/2 cup refined coconut oil
3 8 ounce jars
Thick natural wicks
Wick stickers
Chopsticks for holding your wicks in place

Tools:
Pot dedicated to messy projects
Containers to melt wax with

1. Secure your wicks to the bottom of your jars.
2. Place at least 1 inch of water in your pot and put your container for melting wax inside.
3. Put your wax and coconut oil in the container and simmer over low heat until melted.
4. Let your wax cool a bit before adding to your jars to avoid cracking. Pour melted wax into your jars and avoid moving them for a few hours until cooled. (If you get large cracks while cooling, you can heat your oven to its lowest setting and re-melt your candles. Once they are melted, turn off your oven and leave the candles in to cool.)
5. Trim wicks to about 1/2 inch and burn!

Happy Solstice!

🐝🕯

12/18/2021

I ran out of my last tube of homemade lip balm last month and while I had initially planned to just make candles for presents this year, lip balm didn’t seem like too much more work. Ha!
The tubes I ordered didn’t fit the caps they came with. The recipe I had saved didn’t have the right measurements and the stickers won’t stay on the tubes. This project ended up being way more of a pain than I hoped, but in the end I have a recipe I’m really happy with and at least 200 tubes of lip balm to give as gifts this year!
We have a printer, but I love using outdated office supplies, so I stamped each label by hand and they aren’t perfect or uniform, but it was fun.
Here is the recipe I used if you want to make your own!

Peppermint Lip Balm
180 Grams of refined Coconut oil
2 Grams of Vitamin E (about two droppers full)
55 Grams of Shredded Beeswax
25 Drops Peppermint Essential Oil
1 Lip Balm Tube Filling Tray
50 Lip Balm Tubes with Lids
1.    Fit Lip Balm Tubes into filling tray, aligning the top of the tubes flush with the tray. (Check that your caps fit before filling!)
2.    Warm Oil and Beeswax over very low heat in a diy double boiler (not over 140 degrees).
3.    Let cool slightly, add Vitamin E and Essential Oil, blend well and quickly pour into Lip Balm Containers.
4.     Let sit at room temperature to harden.

09/04/2021

It has been over 10 years since I have picked up my knitting needles. I started on a 1x1 rib hat to get my rhythm back. It has been a bit of a mess, but super satisfying to take it all apart when things get out of hand. It has been so good for my mental health. Having my hands busy is keeping me off social media and has made me a better listener.
If you want to start out or need a refresher YouTube tutorials are fantastic. I printed out the pdf of the hat pattern and have watched her videos to help me when I forget how to do something.
I’m hoping to finish a few more hats in time for holiday gifting. 🤞🧶

09/04/2021

I kept dragging my feet on getting chicks this year, but we lucked out that a friend needed to thin her flock and had a few girls for us. We cleaned our compost bin for them to hang out with the older girls and get used to each other before we add them to the coop. Pixie was very excited to meet her new friends! Thank you ! ❤️🐓

07/09/2021

A member of our local Buy Nothing group was giving away some extra nesting box herbs that she had made for her chickens. They are so pretty and the girls seem to like them! She made them with lavender, oregano, rose petals, marigolds, eucalyptus & rosemary.

I love our Buy Nothing community. I have found things I needed and saved me from buying something new. So many items we don’t need anymore have found new homes with happy new families.

06/05/2021

Have you all tried this? Last Saturday I saw a TikTok about keeping strawberries fresh for a week with this method and got so excited. I have a child who has eyes bigger than his stomach when it comes to strawberries and half of what we buy ends up with the chickens or in the compost. This week I put our unwashed and uncut strawberries in a glass jar in the fridge and they stayed fresh and juicy all week! No wrinkles or mold or squishy spots. One morning he didn’t finish his bowl and I put some washed (uncut) berries back in the jar with no problem. I always love a good trick to avoid food waste!

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