One of my favourite scents in the world is the smell of the forest at my cottage. It smells utterly divine, and a hint of it in the city always fills me with a longing for sunshine and summertime.
The woods are mostly spruce and birch trees, and the fresh water that comes off the lake rustles through their needles and leaves on the way to my perch on our screened in porch. If you go for a walk through the woods you’ll easily find raspberry bushes, wildflowers, and a little creek that feeds a lily pad covered frog pond that the kids love to play in. The calls of the loon and the white throated sparrow frequently punctuate the morning air, along with the buzz of the hummingbird and the squeaks of a pack of squirrels that derive endless entertainment from tormenting everybody’s dogs.
This room spray is my bid to have a bit of summer in the wintertime. Winter is our longest and most depressing season, and each year as it arrives I wonder why I haven’t moved to Australia yet. It’s amazing how quickly you can forget that outside can have a smell—when your nostrils fuse shut in the cold winter air you are generally more concerned with breathing than with what -30°C smells like. So, this spray, with its hints of spruce, fir, pine, campfires, sunshine, and wildflowers, seeks to remind me of the joys of summer while I count down to warm weather once again.
Cottage Room Spray
10 drops black spruce essential oil
10 drops fir essential oil
10 drops pine essential oil
10 drops cedarwood essential oil (optional)
1 drop birch tar essential oil (or vetiver)
5 drops labdanum essential oil (optional)
1 drop rose absolute (or another floral essential oil)Carrier oil or perfumery alcohol, to fill
Blend all the carrier oils together in a 10mL bottle. Top off with carrier oil or perfumery alcohol (cheap vodka will do). Decant between two 5mL spray bottles.
You can use carrier oil instead, but if you dilute the essential oils in carrier oil, the mixture won’t really spray, it’ll spurt/blast, not mist.
You can also mix the essential oils with an equal amount of solubilizer and then add that mixture to at least 60ml water.
I love this idea! I’m new here, so please forgive me if you have answered this question a bazillion times, but where can I buy the cute spray container? Thanks so much! Tracy
Saffire Blue 🙂
Thanks so much!
🙂
What did you mix this with, a carrier oil or H2O? Can’t wait to try this recipe!
I went back and clarified the recipe since “to fill” buried in the instructions didn’t seem to be clear enough 🙂
Looks great but I have the same question. I see some wonderful essential oils. What carrier oils would you use (and how much)? Thanks!
I went back and clarified the recipe since “to fill” buried in the instructions didn’t seem to be clear enough 🙂
Dear Humblebee! I came across your site not sure how, must have been a shared link, while over here in the baking Persian Gulf where I am teaching English at a university in Oman. I have long wanted to make my own everything, esp. non-toxic cleaning solutions, but many of the ingredients are not available here, as like many rapidly developing nations, they want Western goods fast and cheap (and usually made as toxically as possible in China). As a Canadian you make me homesick for the West and for your lifestyle, not the life I had in horrible Waterloo, Ontario. I am not sure if I will ever go back to Canada as there are so few job opportunities for me (certainly not as well paid as what the rich Arabs are willing to pay for learning English) but your site will be my friend for a long time to come when I can make my own cleaning products (never mind the delicious vegetarian foods which I may well be able to reproduce here!) and live a much healthier life. I plan to finally settle in France, but in the meantime, your blogs make my difficult days here a bit kinder and simpler, and I am very grateful to have found you! Namaste to you always, and thank you from Mona Lisa (my real name) here in Gulf! Oh and one more thing, I cannot think of a more glorious season than winter after days of endless sunshine. If you ever move to Australia, you may well miss those frigid Manitoba winters more than you can ever imagine! Take care xxx and thank you again!
Hi Mona Lisa 🙂 How exciting it must be to live overseas! I always daydream about living somewhere warm and lovely. Sigh. I can promise you I’ll never miss a Canadian winter, though—my body simply cannot handle the cold. Come summer I am somewhat surprised to find I have toes as I won’t have felt them in 8 months, haha. It’s too bad that ingredients are hard to come by there, though 🙁 I’m afraid I don’t have any suggestions for suppliers in Oman—the closest thing I can think of is NDA UK, which is still pretty far away.
As for coming back to Canada, they do say Saskatchewan is booming, and we sure have tons of jobs in Alberta… the weather does bite, though. And housing is hard to find, especially with all the flooding we had this summer. France sounds like a much better idea! You’ll have so much wonderful cheese and I will be soooo jealous.
Thanks for reading and I’ll “see” you around 🙂 Enjoy your sunshine!
I was wondering how much carrier oil to use? I LOVE the smell of “sun-baked pine” as i call it. The delightful summer forest smell. I think I would give this to my Husband for perfume, lol 🙂
I went back and clarified the recipe since “to fill” buried in the instructions didn’t seem to be clear enough 🙂