How to make a corn heat bag

Today I'm going to put together a simple tutorial on how to make a corn heat bag. I have several of these in different sizes and they are amazing used hot or cold for basically any injury you might have. I've had my original one for over 20 years and other than the fabric getting kinda dingy, it still works great!

I've made several more since that original one and I keep a smaller one in the freezer and the larger ones just in the cupboard to warm up when needed. Depending where you're at in an injury, you could use hot or cold, so I like to have a few ready. I swear I get hurt more living on a farm than any other time of my life! But I digress...

Let's talk heat packs!

How to make an Aromatherapy Bedroom Gnome with Lavender!

When my kids were little I had typical screwed up, parents sleep schedule. I was often trying to fall asleep when I had time to sleep and not necessarily when I was tired! Yeah, that! I got this cute little sleepy time teddy bear with a little lilac colored robe on and he was filled with lavender. I would set it on my pillow next to my face and it would help me fall asleep.

The kids knew this and if they couldn't fall asleep they would ask me to bring them "smell my butt teddy". That was the teddy bears name because the lavender scent was strongest at his butt. lol Kids are funny. 

Well it's many years later and I still use a lavender spray or lavender eye pillow to help me fall asleep some nights.

So I started thinking that a lavender gnome would be super easy to make and really cute, plus ya know, gnomes are trendy right now! I've made a lot of gnomes as décor, so I decided to write out the way I do it and show you how I make this cute little gnome to help you fall asleep faster. 

Since gnomes are small, this is a perfect project to use up scraps of fabric and notions. 

Seed Sharing Envelope DIY

Today I am sharing a printable seed packet template I made. I created it with different types of plants in mind and it's super easy to print, cut out and fill these mini seed envelopes. It's a great way to label your own seeds or share your seeds with other gardeners. That was a big part of the huge success in backyard gardening last year...seed sharing!

Last year a weird thing happened in the garden industry. They ran out of seeds! Almost 30 years gardening and I've never seen this happen! When the lockdowns started people started worrying about the food supply and since spring was right around the corner, they decided to plant their own gardens. 

Smart move. Not only was it  a home based activity when we were being asked to stay home, but it was an outdoor activity. Sunshine and fresh air is good for everyone! Did you know that 42% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D? Since our skin absorbs vitamin D from sunlight, spending some time in the sun is a good idea. Just use sunscreen, nobody wants skin damage or sunburn!

Sorry...went off topic!

This sudden interest in gardening overwhelmed the seed companies and many of them stopped taking orders because they couldn't keep up. Gardeners who saved their seeds from last years garden, were way ahead of the game. Many of them shared seeds with fellow gardeners and newbie growers.

Seed packet & charm craft

This is one of the most challenging holidays that I have ever worked through. I literally have driven myself crazy coming up with gift ideas that don't use a ton of stuff you need to run out and buy! Last week I wrote about homemade gifts and many of them use ingredients you probably have on hand already. This week I'm going to try to do the same thing, but this one is a little homemade garden gift!

What I came up with for today is a simple seed packet DIY. This will make a cute gift for a gardener friend. All you'll need is a printer and you can make this using seeds you collected from your own flowering plants this year, or you can pick some seeds up at the local feed store.

I came up with 2 different seed packet designs. One features bees and the other butterflies, because pollinators are so important to our food supply! I will also include a quick bracelet tutorial using charms I ordered at Michaels crafts. They offer curbside pick up, so I didn't even leave my car to get them!

Natural DIY gifts that will be ready for the holidays!

I absolutely did not plan on writing a new gift guide for this year, especially one with homemade gifts! Then I was asked by a family member if I knew of any good DIY natural gifts that weren't 'cheesy' that I could teach them to make. Being short on money and not wanting to go to all the stores this year makes it hard to shop for Christmas gifts! 

I thought about it and I know with this crazy year we've had, a lot of other people are in that situation too. So I decided to compile a list of my natural gift tutorials.

With the exception of the homemade vanilla extract these are all very affordable. As of right now, I have 15 of my own gifts you can make on this list, but I will add to it as I write more. I'll also add the craft tutorials from my chicken keeping blog, but you can use any feathers for these.

Seed bombs and other nature crafts for Earth Day!

Normally when Earth Day rolls around I busy myself with making changes inside the house to celebrate Earth Day. Getting myself some reusable bags or dryer balls is a great way to make my carbon footprint smaller year round. This year though, I'm over being inside the house! I wanted to do an activity that could take me outdoor instead! I decided to make seed bombs and throw them around on earth day.

Seed bombs are balls of compost or soil and flower seeds held together with a bit of clay. Once these seed bombs dry you can take them outside and toss them wherever you want flowers to grow! When they hit the ground they pop open (if you toss them) and when it rains they start germinating. 

Even if they don't break when they land, the seeds will still germinate in the next rain and plant themselves wherever they land. I happen to live in the woods so I'm going to throw them in all the open areas so maybe something besides wild blackberries and pokeweed will grow! lol

This is not to encourage guerrilla gardening, though if you do use seed bombs on an area you don't own make sure to use the seeds of native wildflowers not invasive species. I wouldn't advise anything like that, but if some of them were to make their way into empty lots that are overgrown with weeds...well, it might look pretty. (says the girl who used to live in the city next to a lot filled with weeds! Yes, it would have looked pretty!)

Simple bird suet recipe

If you're anything like me then you can't stand to see the birds searching for food in the snow. I have several bird feeders and suet holders hanging from the trees in the woods and on my back porch. I make sure they're always full in the winter. I love seeing the wild birds. We have so many different varieties of birds out here and I try to feed them all.

It gets expensive.

Especially if you want to put out food for several types of birds. Once type likes millet, another prefers sunflower seeds, the squirrels try to steal it all *sigh*. I started making my own suet blocks since finding ones that were good quality and affordable was becoming more difficult. The birds around here don't like to eat the cheap ones, believe me I have tried! 

I came up with a super simple recipe. These are about the easiest suet blocks you can make and you really only need 2 ingredients: seeds and fat. Oh, and you'll need a baking pan and a refrigerator if you want to speed things up. 

Even though this recipe starts out super simple, you can totally customize it! Add peanuts, dried fruit, oats or whatever kind of seed your local birds like. I whipped up a quick batch of suet cakes so I could take some pics for you. I had several types of seeds and some mealworms on hand so I used all of them, but whatever you have will work!

Fall air freshener DIY and other homestead gifts

The first cool day has come which means the unofficial start of pumpkin everything season! Lol No really, fall is on it's way and the stores are filled with the cutest Autumn decor. Incidentally just last week I was whipping up a new batch of my MYO air fresheners using essential oils and I got the idea to make some fall themed scents and use some of those cute jars and such to hold them! 

Making your own air fresheners is super easy and it's so much better for your health to have these in your home than one of those scented cone air fresheners that are packed with tons of chemicals! Or even the gel ones. I mean, do you really know what all those things on the ingredient list are? It's kinda scary when you think about it. 

I have 2 different ways I like to make my own air fresheners. The first is to make a gel with gelatin, water, vodka and food coloring then add essential oils and allow to cool. 

This makes an awesome scented gel that is no spill and can be customized completely. These are great for filling cute seasonal votives and glass pumpkins. (exact recipe below)

Easy sew sinus headache pillow

I 'may have' mentioned a time or two that I get headaches. I have tried lots of different methods to get rid of them and it seems like anything that works, doesn't work all the time. I have had great results using essential oils for headaches and often take turmeric or drink basil tea to help alleviate the pain. The headaches I had last week though were a real doozy!

During this last bout of headaches, I reasoned that due to an accompanying stuffy nose they were most likely sinus headaches. Thankfully I have a lavender eye mask. It's a silk pillow filled with flaxseed and lavender. Simply heat it up in the microwave and lay across the eye/forehead area for about 10 minutes. Instant relief!

Except, as soon as the headache started to subside I needed to warm it back up. Not a big deal during the day, but when awakened by head pain at night I didn't want to run back and forth to the kitchen a bunch of times. I wanted to heat it once, place it on my head and fall back to sleep as it worked. 

Clearly I needed a different eye mask. I remembered the hand warmers I made a few years back and decided to use them instead. Next time the headache hit, I warmed them up and popped them on my eyes. The heat lasted at least twice as long! 

I raise chickens, and somehow that makes my family think I know everything about Easter egg trends. *sigh* Two years ago I got asked how to do the shaving cream colored Easter eggs thing. Last year several people wanted to know how to do the nail polish marbling. This year, it's silk tie dyed eggs. 

I have chickens that lay white, brown, blue, green and speckled eggs...I really don't need to dye Easter eggs! However, in the interest in knowledge and experiment I decided to figure out the silk tie dye thing. Turns out, it was pretty darn easy!

All your going to need are ties, an old t-shirt, some string, some vinegar and water. Oh...and the eggs. White of course! 

How to color eggs with silk

Make you own air fresheners

Would you like to make your own air fresheners using essential oils but don't know where to start? I have 3 super easy recipes to show you today. The first recipe uses gelatin to make a gel air freshener, kind of like the commercial gel cones in stores. I also use water beads to make a fun, bubble looking air freshener. Lastly we'll throw it way back to when we all put baking soda in our refrigerators to make the third (easiest) one.

I actually still put baking soda in my refrigerator, but I digress.

I've never been fond of commercial air fresheners. I like the scents, I've just always worried about what kind of chemicals they put into them to make them smell like that. Is it really a good idea to breathe that stuff in? So I started using essential oils to scent my house several years back. I put them in reed diffusers and mixed them into soy candles as I made them.

The easiest way I found to use essential oils as an air freshener was by mixing them with  baking soda OR Orbeez (water balls) and simply setting a dish of them out in the room. I was using this method for several years when I found that you can make gel air fresheners with gelatin and EO's. Game changer! It's super easy too...

How to make air freshener with essential oils

I know there is a lot of talk about which essential oils are the best and most pure. When using essential oils for air fresheners though, that's not as important as when placing them on your skin. 

Not that you don't still want to use pure oils...you do! It's just using essential oils as a room deodorizer is the perfect way to use up oils that are a little older, lower quality or the ones in your oil kit that you just can't find a use for. 

Related reading: Getting started with Essential oils cheaply.

Making campfire starters

About 2 years back I posted a tutorial on how to Make your own Fire Starters. The fire starters I made in that post were the small size. They are the perfect size for starting a fireplace fire. In the summer though, we don't use the fireplace but we do use the fire pit. Nothing says summer like a great big bonfire! 

I decided I better come up with a larger sized fire starter for the bonfires. If i didn't come up with something, hubby was going to continue to do it his way and that is a bad idea! (I'll give you a hint....his way includes massive amounts of gasoline and a big "Whoosh" as it ignites! Not safe!!) 

I dug around and found a few ideas to make much larger fire starters. These ones still use old wax and this time I'm recycling egg cartons and empty toilet paper tubes. Just like the first fire starters, these ones are really easy, and cheap. I'll show you how!

Last minute Valentines Day pencil topper

With Valentines day fast approaching I wanted to make some kind of Valentines day craft with my niece. Back in the day that I was a waitress I used to decorate my pens for the holidays. You see, customers have a tendency to take the pens they sign the credit card slip with. I solved that problem by giving them a "fancy" pen.

There was no way they were going to 'accidentally' take the pen with the leprechaun or Jack-o-lantern on it! Of course I dressed up me pens for Valentines day too!

I decided to make a pen (or pencil) topper. This one is really simple. You need some tulle, ribbon, cardboard and hot glue. The best part is that it only takes a few minutes.

Make your own cat toy!

The first time I saw these cat toys was at a craft show back in probably 2002. I was making a lot of my own natural bath & body products and working the craft show circuit to sell them. At every single show there was somebody selling these things. It wasn't always the same people though, I guess it's a popular item to make. 

What always caught my eye though were the ones that would bring a big wire dog crate and put a cat inside. Those cats would play all day with those catnip toys. These toys are the perfect size and shape for them to hug and do that 'bunny kick' thing. They flip  on their back and just kick away at those catnip laced kitty sticks. Oh those cats had so much fun! 

Thinking back they were probably pretty buzzed up! lol Anyway, it's a simple toy so of course I figured out how to make kitty kick toys when I got home. My cats love them, and I know yours will too.

What to do with Orbeez (water beads)

If you have kids, by now you've been begged for some of these squishy, bouncy water balls. Even if you don't have kids you've probably seen the commercials. Little tiny marbles that grow when you soak them in water and provide hours of creative fun. Yeah right!

My son lasted about 20 minutes before he went "But what do they DO?" Ummmm...nothing. Somewhere a man is flying cross country in his new jet laughing his butt off at all of us, but I digress. 

Now that you bought the Orbeez and the kids are bored with them, what can you do with water balls?

What are orbeez anyway?

First, let's start with what they are. Orbeez are a superabsorbent polymer that can absorb and retain extremely large amounts of liquid relative to their own mass. These SAPs are then formed into a ball for that waterball look. 

You're probably more familiar with them though as the stuff inside diapers & sanitary pads or those gel like chunks in the pot of plants that grow in water like the Lucky Bamboo plants. Which brings me to my first 'alternative' use....

MYO body scrub (low price, spa quality!)

I love to make my own bath and body care products for many reasons, the main reason being that I can control things like consistency or scent. It bothers me how many chemicals there are in your typical drugstore body care products. Making them myself means I can add exactly what I need without excess preservatives, colorings and such. I can also make a brand new scrub any time I want, without having to drive to the store!

The first time I made a hand scrub scrub I used liquid soap. Sounds weird, I know...but it really cleans stains well. Especially the gross stains I get from cleaning chicken coops and gardening! Over the years though I have experimented with various ingredients to make my own body scrubs. Now I don't even add soap. 

Seriously! I got the idea from a lip scrub that I bought in a store. Using it I realized that it had no soap or detergent type product, just oil, sugar and color. That's honestly all that you need...though many of those types need washed off, which adds another step to your process.

I've been dabbling in homemade beauty products for probably a dozen years now. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Lush...but I'm cheap remember? So while I love the smell of loveliness that high end natural beauty products have, I know I can make it much cheaper (and healthier) myself. 

When you make your own body scrubs, hand butter, lip balms, creams, cuticle oil etc. you can also control just how much chemical your body comes in contact with too. Did you know that your skin is your body's largest organ? It absorbs the stuff we put on it, and I'm just not comfortable putting tons of chemicals on my skin on a regular basis. Are you?

Body scrubs are one of the easiest body care products to make at home and very customizable. You can use sugar OR salt! Since there are no added preservatives I only mix up enough for a few weeks at a time, though I have stored these for a year or more and they were fine. (ok...I forgot they were there! lol)

Point is, they do keep if you make a bit too much!

How to dye feathers cheaply

Easter is almost here and as I look at my list of crafts I want to make I notice one big issue, I'm going to need a lot of feathers. Not just any feathers though, multi colored ones! Some of these are very specific colors too. 

With 80 assorted poultry is residence I have plenty of feathers it's just a matter of getting them the color I want. Obviously I'm going to have to dye them, but how? So glad you asked, because I have 3 different feather dying methods that I decided to try out today.

Easy craft: Google eyed egg people

I'm bored! Seriously, the amount of snow we've had over the last 2 months has made me stir crazy and I can't wait for summer and gardening season to get here! So I've been working on my garden. Planning mostly, but I've started seeds for some of the smaller plants like herbs. Herbs are a great choice to start early because they do well in pots on the windowsill. Plus, herbs transplant into the garden easily once the soil warms up.

I've been saving eggshells and using them to start seeds. They are perfect for herbs and look so much cuter on the windowsill then those plastic nursery starter pots. The lavender started sprouting and the way it was growing almost made the eggshell look like...well, an egghead! 

First I started laughing at it. Then I started thinking. Guess what happened next? I discovered a cute and simple Easter craft!

Dip dyed Kool-aid hair

Last year I was dubbed the 'meanest mom in the world'. No kidding! I won that title by making my daughter abide by school rules. Of course "all the other moms let their kids do it!" My daughter wanted to dye her hair different colors using Kool-aid and I refused to let her. 

It was against school policy to have 'unnaturally colored hair' and I was against breaking the rules. So she didn't get to dye her hair even though many of her friends did, and I won my meanest mom title. Well, she graduated this year, so not only did I let her dip dye her hair....I did it for her!

How to dye hair with Kool-aid

It was super simple really....all we needed was unsweetened Kool-aid, boiling water, a few bowls and some paper towels. Oh, and a nice day so we could go outside in case there were drips! Didn't want to wreck the carpet, ya know?

Graduation party memory jar

The middle child graduated from high school this year. Wow, I'm getting old! Right? Anyway: I've mentioned before that we're originally from Pittsburgh which is over an hour away. To make a really long story super short, we ended up with 2 graduation parties. 1 in Pittsburgh for the family, and a smaller one at home for the school friends. 

So we had a lot of work to do to make the 2 parties different, yet not blow the budget completely!

It took a lot of planning but we were determined to make each party unique. One of the ideas I saw during the planning process was a memory jar kit. A plain thin glass jar with a cardboard plaque that said to write a memory to place inside for the grad. B-O-R-I-N-G! I took the idea and ran with it, hitting the Walmart and the Dollar tree for some supplies.