Pioneer Woman at Heart

My first post for 2025. January 2025 started with a clean washing machine, clean oven mitts, and a clean dishwasher.   I got all three cleaned by the afternoon of the last day of 2024.  It rained the entire day, and the temperature was in the 30's.  Awful weather, but the right kind to make it much easier to sit and crochet for a bit. January 1st it snowed.  We got more snow last night, and there is a possibly snow storm later this weekend, but our temperature may be too cold for snow here. Winter time is a time to rest and re-set.   I do try to embrace the slow down, because those busy garden days will arrive soon enough.  Winter time pick me ups - smelling the orange or clementine as I peel it (really boosts the mood).  Also, painting my fingernails.  I buy the chemical free brand, and winter is the only time I get to pamper my fingernails.  The rest of the year, I'm busy playing with dirt. On the home repair front . . . Hubby rep...

  You may get a laugh out of this discovery, but it's a reminder to get your recipes out before you do early prep work.  I started a catnip infused oil earlier in May, thinking it was what I needed for my homemade bug spray.  It was not.   I then thought I used catnip oil for homemade tick repellent, and that was not it either. Having said that, I started a catnip tincture .  Good grief.  I started making the bug spray way back around 2015.   It works to repel bug bites, but if it's very hot out, you do need to re-apply it during your time outdoors. (photos from September of 2015, when I first made the bug repellent spray) The link for the online recipe no longer works, but the original recipe was from Mountain Rose Herbs.  They have changed the recipe and the title over three times since then.  It was first called Bug-Away Spray, then a Skeeter spray, and again changed after that.   I went searching for the link to share,...