Ditch the scented candles this Christmas...

It's natural to want to make your home cozy and inviting over the holiday season. When you're preparing to host a party for family and friends this year, why not go non-toxic, and REALLY make your home healthy and welcoming?

Did you know that there are toxins in your air fresheners and scented candles? Fresh and clean smelling air is always the goal for setting the mood during the holidays, but spraying air fresheners, using plug ins, and lighting those candles can also cause a lot of harm. The synthetic fragrance in these types of products can cause serious respiratory, reproductive, and endocrine problems.

A safer, clean air option is to use pure, therapeutic grade essential oils. Diffusing Young Living Essential Oils in an ultrasonic diffuser combines the advantages of a humidifier, air purifier, atomizer, and aromatherapy diffuser into one by breaking a mixture of essential oils and water into millions of microparticles and diffusing them into the air. Diffusing high quality essential oils provides a safe and effective method for purifying and scenting the air in your home. It is a fantastic alternative to harmful air fresheners, candles, and plug ins.

My favourite Young Living Essential Oil Blend to diffuse during the holidays is Christmas Spirit. 

You can order this and many other therapeutic grade essential oils by becoming a Young Living member (for FREE) ~ for more info visit my website.

You can also find out how to get a sweet Young Living Raindrop diffuser as part of your Premium Starter Kit here.

Another DIY Clean Air Option is to fill a 4 oz spray bottle and fill with water. Add 3-5 drops Young Living essential oil of your choice. Spray the room!

LABOUR OF LOVE

Every year I have good intentions of making one of my mother's favorite confections - Chocolate Covered Orange Peel.  Unfortunately, it never makes it on to my very long To Do lists, well except for this year of course.  To make things a little more exciting, I chose to make Christmas Candy instead of Christmas Cookies because, well, quite frankly, I am bored with making cookies.  I guess my stint at running an organic bakery kind of wore that novelty thin.  So I got busy with the chocolate last week, and I am still reeling from the sugar highs.  First there wast the Chocolate Covered Toffee which was very exciting to make because toffee is one of my favorite foods.  This toffee is so much easier to eat too because it is made with Brown Rice Syrup, so it's not sicky sweet.  Ok, so it is sicky sweet, but not deathly sicky sweet.  After gorging on that, I made a batch of Soule Mama's well loved Chocolate Peppermint Candy, well because she can't stop talking about it, so it must be pretty good.  Well, she's right, it is very good.  I made the mistake of trying to make a second batch using homemade white chocolate, which definitely isn't as good as store bought, so in case you have any inclination of doing this yourself as well, I don't recommend it.  

The grand finale was the chocolate covered orange peel which I adapted from this recipe and then dipped in melted dark organic chocolate (if you make this recipe, be sure to omit the sugaring before you dip!) 

Good thing I was making those for someone I really love, because quite honestly, they are a lot of work.  The whole time I kept thinking " Mom, you are so worth this, that is the only reason I am doing it!"  I really hope she enjoys them because a lot of love went into making them. 

 As I was scraping the extra pith off of each and ever piece of orange peel, I suddenly had a great idea that would make quick work of this grueling task.  How appropriate that my mother recently gave me an Alaskan Ulu the last time she came for a visit.  This very sharp blade is the perfect tool for scraping pith, or anything for that matter.  Maybe she had a premonition I would really need it one day to make her gifts!?

The orange and chocolate theme continued into today, Winter Solstice, when Faegan and I baked a birthday cake for the sun and used one of the leftover peeled oranges to make a sun for decoration.  Lovely and yummy.  Happy Solstice everyone!