30 chic days: day 23: more smelling nice: body & home

                               

More Perfume Hints

Another tip for our body is to layer our scent. This can be done very easily by having an unscented body lotion and just popping a squiz of perfume into it. Then use the scent, and top your scent up later in the day. There is also the option of "training" friends & family to give you lotions, and soap, etc, in your favourite scent for xmas & birthdays.

Some other tips from moi: you don't have to go all matchy with scents, just make sure that your soap is unscented and your deodorant has just a tint of a smell. Then it's easy to have everything blend in. Of course, you can get very decently priced body washes and lotions in the same "scent" just from the supermarket.

Essential Oils For Delicious Smells

If you do have a nice essential oil, like lavender, geranium, or ylang ylang, you can pop some into grapeseed oil for your body lotion, or into your unscented lotion. Inexpensive and delicious smelling. And, just one drop of lavender or geranium, if you have either, is magical in your night moisturiser.

And In The Home

What about in the home? 

• You can wipe down many surfaces with lavender oil
• You can put it in a wee spray bottle with water to "refresh" your rooms
• You can also spray your ironing board with it
• Pop a few drops in with your washing powder when you do your washing
• Put a dab on the corner of your pillow just before you go to bed for a great night's sleep. Lavender is a very calming oil.

I love to open up doors and windows each day for a fresh smelling house. One of my kids used to ask: why is there wind blowing through the house? But we can use nice smelling stuff as well. There are scented candles, oil burners and incense, which for me are more night time things.

I love to pop "things" in my clothes drawers: 

• empty soap wrappers
• incense packets
• this morning I put an empty tiny box that had held a perfumed oil, in with my socks
• I've also used empty perfume bottles
• I like to put my perfumes in as well
• if you're cash-strapped, you can get a squirt of a very expensive perfume on some blotting paper in department stores to stash in with your wee undies
• there are also bath salts in little cubes that you could use
• and I like to put soap wrappers etc in my cupboards with towels and sheets, too.

Pot Pourri 

The vintage chic book that I've been reviewing, had a most charming recipe for pot pourri: 

• the author Leslie mixed any flowers that came her way as gifts, such as roses, geraniums, lavender.
• lay all the flowers to dry in a single layer on a tray, in any warm place, and turn them over until they are crumbly
• the flowers are completely dry when the petals fall off the stalks as you shake them; rose petals hold their shape so you can leave the flower whole
• heap the mixture in pretty bowls, ones with wide necks give out a stronger scent
• add a teaspoon of orris root powder to each container and mix it through. This helps preserve the scent and the colour

When Leslie was feeling extravagant she would add the ends of bottles of scent or bath oil to the mixtures and give them a new lease of life. A good stirring revives it magically. Experiment with flower colours and scents until you find the one that pleases you. Pot pourri can be placed nicely around the home, or in cupboards, for lovely smells.

She also made small fabric sachets by:

• cutting out two pieces of fabric, seven and a half centimetres by twelve and a half centimetres, or thereabouts
• sew them together along two long and one short side, inside out
• turn right side out
• fill them with pot pourri mix
• tie up the top with a scrap of ribbon. 

If you don't want to sew the bags, you can also buy similar bags from $2 shops, and fill them. Leslie put these sachets in every drawer. When the smell began to be faint, she just poured scent on them and put them back, making sure the damp side doesn't touch any clothing, or it will leave a stain.