May 2020 - Simply Me DIY

You can use an essential oil spray for all kinds of things. I have one for me, one for dog babies, one for the curtains/carpet/house…

**NEVER USE ESSENTIAL OILS ON CATS

These kind of sprays are most often used as a deodorant of some kind.

What you want to use them for will determine what oils or carrier you may want to use.

There’s a few things to remember when you’re putting together an essential oil spray.

First – NEVER use essential oils on cats.

If you have a pet other than a dog or cat, please do your research. Some animals just can’t handle essentials oils at all.

Second – Quality Counts

Clove is supposed to be great for a
tooth ache.

Here’s a great place to learn about and find essential oils. There’s information here on what the different oils are good for and if you feel so inclined you can buy them here too.

Wherever you decide to buy your oils, be sure you are buying 100% pure essential oils. You don’t want a fragrance. And just remember, if it’s cheap, it’s probably not good quality oil.

A good quality essential oil will usually cost a little more, but that’s because you usually only need a few drops of it. A quality oil is pretty potent and frankly, it’s worth the money.

Make sure whatever you use with your oils is of just as good a quality, especially if you’re using it on your pet or your own skin.

Third – Essential Oils Are Stout

If you’re going to use it on your canine fur baby, only use a few drops. We have about 6 million smell receptors in our nose but your furry baby has about 300 million. A light smell to us is a giant smell to them and we don’t want to overwhelm them or cause discomfort.

I spray a cloud and walk my pups through it. That way it’s just a very light mist. I usually pet them afterwards to help it soak into their coats.

And I make them their own separate spray with very little essential oils in it. Remember it don’t take much.

Here’s a few things to decide on when you’re putting your spray together.

Essential Oils

Orange and orange oil — Orange smells awesome.

We all know that different essential oils, just like herbs, are used to support all kinds of different things.

Some will help you relax, or maybe invigorate and wake you up. Others may be supportive of a body function, help alleviate an allergy or other condition or just support your general wellness.

Knowing the purpose for your spray will help you choose the essential oil you’ll want to use. Or maybe you just like the smell of a specific oil or oil blend and want to use it as an air freshener.

Whatever your purpose is, your homemade essential oil stray will be much better than what you would buy at a store. You’ll know exactly what’s in it.

Here’s a few oils to look at, some of which you probably already know about (and remember you can always find more here):

Lavender

We all know lavender is great for supporting relaxation and easing a weary mind. Find out more about lavender here.

Citrus (orange or lemon)

A citrus scent is perfect for lifting your spirits. When you smell citrus it just makes you feel good.

*Note: If you spray a citrus spray on your skin, wait a while before you go out into the sun. It can make your skin sensitive to the sunlight.

Peppermint

Peppermint is great in helping to relieve headaches or migraines. It’s also been used to temporarily suppress the appetite.

Sandalwood

This has been used for thousands of years to enhance your mood.

Rosemary

Helps to reduce nervous tension & occasional fatigue.

Cedar

Cedar has a warm homey smell. It’s great for using in your house after work to just sit back and relax (especially on a cold night) and it’ll help ground you.

Bonus: insects hate all those oils with heavy smell like cedar, rosemary, basil, and lavender. All those ones we LOVE to smell.

The carrier spray

This is the liquid you will want to put the oils in. This can be water, witch hazel, or a combination of both. You might want to add a touch of a carrier oil too if you’re using it for a person or a dog. Something like almond or coconut oil, depending on what you’re wanting to do.

Water

Adding your essential oil to water is the easiest way to go. After you spray on yourself or carpet or curtains, the water will evaporate leaving the essential oil to do it’s thing and to smell awesome.

Witch Hazel

Lavender oil and a flower — Lavender is great for relaxing.

This is an astringent, meaning when you use it on your skin, it tones and tightens, (think pores). It’s also an antibacterial. When we sweat it’s the bacteria that creates and puts off a smell. You can use Witch Hazel with a few drops of your favorite scent to kill that bacteria which helps remove the smell and then replace it with whatever essential oil you’re using.

I use this as a deodorant. Pair it with the essential oil of an herb that’s also an antibacterial, say….lavender, and you’ve got a pretty good thing going on.

A few drops of carrier oil

This can be any kind of oil really. Olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil, just to name a few. In 8 oz of water or witch hazel, you’d only need about 1/8 of a tsp. This oil will help hold the moisture in and it also gives the essential oils something to spread in when you rub it on your skin.

This isn’t really necessary, but it’s a nice luxury that doesn’t cost much to add. You’ll want to make sure you don’t spray this on any cloth or it’ll show and won’t be real easy to wash out.

Mixing Your Essential Oil Spray

Ingredients for a spray for a person — What you need for a spray for a person. Change the witch hazel to
regular water for a room spray.

I found out the hard way, that if you mix too much and leave it in your spray bottle, you’ll be using that same essential oil in that bottle forever.

I don’t remember what I originally mixed it for, but I mixed water and lavender oil. Then didn’t use it all. I left some in an 8 ouch spray bottle.

At some point I decided I wanted to use a citrus spray for something and tried washing that bottle out. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. So I bought another bottle.

Tip– Make small batches and use them. Then rinse out your container. If you do that you should be able to use different scents in the same bottle.

So, that means I would say use an 8 oz bottle for a room/carpet/home deoderizer. You might start out with 5-7 drops of essential oil and if you feel you want more, add more. But, remember it doesn’t take much.

Bergamot — A very relaxing floral scent.

If you’re spraying it on curtains or carpet, remember that oil will attach itself to the fabric and it will stay there after the water evaporates. Even if you don’t continue to smell it in the air the next day. Stick your nose to the curtains or carpet, it’s there.

If you’re using it for your dog, I’d use about a 2 oz bottle. I have 5 dogs, so I still use an 8 oz bottle. So that kind of depends on what you have.

Using your spray

For my personal use, I have a 2 oz spray bottle. It’s out of one of those little airline carry packet things you can pick up at the store. It’s a perfect size and has a lid. I use about 3 drops in that.

One thing you need to remember every time you use your spray is to shake it.

Oil and water don’t mix, so every time you use it, you’ll need to mix it together so you get a good mix each time you spray.

Remember to experiment. As you use more oils, look for blend recipes. They’re everywhere. You may find a blend that you really enjoy better than any single oil.

And if you find one, let us know. Maybe we’d like it too.

Hope you all enjoyed this one. I love using my various sprays. Share what you with come up with everyone in the comments.

Until next time…

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

Have you ever made homemade tortillas?

Cooked homemade tortillas — Homemade tortillas

I use tortillas in place of bread most of the time. I use them for everything from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to mini pizzas.

My husband is still a bread kind of guy and that’s okay. But that’s sorta what pushed me to try making my own homemade tortillas.

I’ve got to confess that I’ve tried making these several times in the past and never could get it figured out. So I’d go back to buying them.

But the packages are so big, it’d take a month of Sundays to eat them all.

So I decided to try again. I looked over several recipes, tried a few and finally put together a simple recipe that works for me.

These homemade tortillas are not only easy to make, but you can change them up a little. It’s real easy to add any herbs or spices to make them taste exactly how you want them to.

Balls of tortilla dough — I call these “Tortilla seeds”

You could add rosemary, basil, garlic powder, or onion powder (Onion powder is really good). Or you might want to add dried spinach, kale or nettle for just a little extra nutritional value. Experiment a little and add whatever might strike your fancy.

This recipe makes 8 at a time which will get me through about a week or two.

There’s only 4 ingredients so these homemade tortillas are really easy to make.

And they stay soft, which is I found amazing after trying to make them before. It’s not the same soft as the store bought, but they’ll roll for a burrito.

Homemade Tortilla Recipe

Tortilla Ingredients

2 Cups of flour
1 tsp salt
3 TBL shortening
3/4 cup of hot water (about 100 deg F.)
1 tsp of your preferred herb or spice (optional)

Mixing Instructions

Mix flour and salt until well blended. If you’re going to add any herbs or spices, now is the time to do it and combine it well.
Next add the shortening and cut it into the flour mixture until it is completely mixed together. I use a pastry cutter but you could use a fork or a couple of butter knives to cut in the shortening.
Then add the hot water and mix completely. Use your hand and just keep mixing to incorporate all the flour until you have a soft dough. If the dough is sticky, sprinkle it with flour and knead it until it becomes soft. It should come off your fingers easily when it’s ready.
Now separate into 8 even balls. I’ll cut the whole thing into 2 pieces and keep dividing each piece into 2 more pieces until I have 8. Then roll them between your palms to make balls.
Press your dough balls out flat, one at a time. You can use a rolling pin to roll them out, a pie pan to squish them or a tortilla press. For more on that, see below.
Heat a skillet to med/low heat. Once the skillet is heated add your flat tortilla shell and let it cook for 30 seconds. Then flip and cook the other side for 30 seconds. Then flip one more time and cook for another 30 seconds. During this last 30 seconds your shell should blow up like a balloon.
Once I remove it from the frying pan, I lay them out on a cooling rack to cool. If you’re going to use them right away, you may want to wrap them in a tea towel to keep them warm.

Pressing your homemade tortillas.

My cast iron tortilla press. Be sure to use something between the dough and the press, or you’ll have a mess.

I bought a cast iron tortilla press with a Christmas gift certificate about 10 years ago and until this year I had never used it. It always sounded liked a great idea, but I just never got around to it.

Now I love it and it’s a regular in my kitchen.

I found out that you need to use something to press your dough between or it sticks. Yep, I did that.

I found out that a gallon sized baggie with the zipper and the sides cut off works great. The raw tortilla comes off the plastic easily and all in one piece.

Or you can use a rolling pin. Flour your rolling surface and your rolling pin and you should be good to go.

Or you can use a pie pan and just squish it flat. I haven’t tried that yet, but I’ve read about people using this method. I’d probably use the baggie on this one too. Save a mess.

They don’t have to be perfectly round to still taste good.

Frying your homemade tortilla shells.

The term “fry” is a little misleading. I use a cast iron skillet to fry up my shells but I don’t use any oil. My guess would be you wouldn’t need oil in a non-stick skillet either, but I’ve never used one of those.

You’ll want to let the skillet get to temperature before you start otherwise that 30 second count won’t work right. Then try to lay the tortilla as flat on the pan as you can. Somehow I always have a wrinkle in it, but that’s okay.

Tortilla in a skillet — The first 30 seconds.

Then let it cook for 30 seconds. After this first 30 seconds it won’t look like it’s cooked enough, but that’s okay, turn it anyway.

Cooking tortilla — The second 30 seconds.

Cook it for another 30 seconds. Now it’ll start looking like what you’d expect a homemade tortilla to look like.

Then turn it and cook it for the last 30 seconds. During this last 30 seconds it should start to puff up. It’ll look like a blown up balloon. It’s my opinion that that’s what helps make them more soft.

After I cook them I lay them out on a cooling rack to allow them to cool so they won’t condensate in the fridge. I store them in a baggie in the fridge with a paper towel, to soak up any moisture that might be in there. This keeps them from getting soggy.

But if you wanted to use them right away, you’d probably want to wrap them in a tea towel to help keep them warm.

So there you have it, homemade tortillas anyone can make.

Do you have a homemade tortilla recipe you love and would like to share? I’d really love to hear it.

And if you give this recipe a try, let me know how it turns out. I’d love to know what extras you may have added and how you liked it.

Until next time.