Perfect cup of Halloween Tea

Collectionsetc.com had the perfect cups for my Halloween tea.

Now as I learned, tea should never be stirred or the wrong tannins will come out

Also black tea needs really boiling water as opposed to green tea and usually teas need to steep 6 minutes before drinking.

You can make the witch with the smelly breath a concoction of parsley and water.

For the stupid witch mix ground sage, owl feather and water

For the sickly green looking witch make her a brew of ground spider,basil fennel and water

The witch with a very bad cold oozing green shnotz use ground garlic and honey

These are just some examples but then if you want something for kids

the video below may have an idea.

Have fun and enjoy your day!

The Scent of Nature

My Dad lived close to a wild blueberry forest. We used to go picking blue berries there every July/August,Which resulted in buckets full of frozen berries for winter as well as jam.

As we picked we always had to be on the look out for bears, not that we ever sawany but it was suggested that there might be a few of them around.

In September he would go and collect the leaves from these bushes, dry them and keep them in an air proof bag till he was ready to drink it as tea and boy ,was it good tea.!!

He also had Crysanthemums he would collect flowers from, leaves from the apple and plum tree and goose berries.

As a result, I got interested in this sort of stuff.

I Love making perfume.

If you go outside there are so many wild flowers you can collect as well as those which you grow in your own yard. Well I collected some and decided I would try something.

I put lots of different flowers into a large pot half filled with water.Then I added half a bottle of virgin olive oil to it and began to simmer the pot till the water almost evaporated at which point , I took out the flowers and allowed the water to continue to simmer till I felt just the oil was left.

I added a bit of vodka so the scent , the oil absorbed from the flowers, would remain.

When it cooled I poured it into little bottles with corks and put it away.

Needless to say I was not doing a professional job. I was just trying it out to see if it worked.

What I had was essence I could burn or put into a candle or even into dried flowers to use in your closet.

I also had this very soft smelling, a bit oily, substance I could rub on my face and skin making it feel soooooo nice.

I was sold. ....AND the biggy……is that I know exactly what was put into the scent. Nothing was put in that would hurt me.

Well, me being me, ( the fun is in making the things not using them) I put the bottles away and naturally forgot about them for maybe a good five years.

Today I found one bottle and tried my perfume and could not believe how exquisite it had become.

I put just a bit on my hand and it smells so wonderful, I could smell it all day.

After spending 50 dollars each, on my sons Versace and David Beckham after shave, for his birthday, I would say mine smells so much nicer.

And cost me a lot cheaper especially with all the essence I got out of it.

Yes Nature is beautiful and provides for everything. All you have to do is go out and find it.

Now I am thinking I should try the lemon grass they sell for cooking at the Superstore.

Too bad I didn’t record what I did but by trial and error you could create wonderful stuff.

http://make-fragrances.blogspot.com/

This blog explains how to do this the right way loll

If anyone wants to give it a go.

Have a great day everyone!!!

P.S. When the Roses Bloom Again. Here's to those who count.

Post to the American Indian

I received this statue as a Christmas present.The American Indian had a way of life many could still learn from. I love the way they knew nature and became one with the world.

The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced differently by several North American Indian Nations, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing and drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and, in some cases, self-torture.
The Native American tribes who practiced sun dance were:

The Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes. Their rituals varied from tribe to tribe.

The buffalo skull is used during the Sun Dance and offerings are presented to the skull.
The Cheyenne stuffed the eye and nose sockets with grass, representing bountiful vegetation for the buffalo, which in turn meant healthy buffalo for the people.

Other tribes believed the grass represents bringing the buffalo back to life for grass is what gives the animal life.
The Dakota believe that the bones of bison they have killed will rise again with new flesh. The soul was seen to reside in the bones of people and animals, to reduce a living being to a skeleton is equivalent to re- entering the womb of this primordial life - a mystical rebirth.

During the dance the buffalo was important to them in visions. He may knock down a dancer, or the dancer may challenge the buffalo by charging at it.
Staying passed out too long meant one was too afraid to face the buffalo lack of courage and unworthy of the buffalo giving him what was asked .
Sometimes one can reach a certain and notice he is seeing through the buffalo's eyes, that he has become one with the buffalo.

The Sun Dance sometimes resolved a conflict between people that view the buffalo as wise and powerful, even closer to the creator than humans, and having to kill and eat them to survive. Making the buffalo sacred, symbolically giving new life to it, and treating it with respect and reverence acts a s a sort of reconciliation.

The Plains Indians saw that the buffalo not only provided them with physical well-being, but kept their souls alive, too.

They also believed that the buffaloes gave themselves to them for food, so the natural course to them would be to offer a part of themselves in return out of gratitude. Thus the sacrifice of the dancers through fasting, thirst, and self-inflicted pain reflects the desire to return something of themselves to nature.

Self-inflicted torture has also come to symbolize rebirth. The torture represents death, then the person is symbolically resurrected. The sun dancer is reborn, mentally and spiritually as well as physically,along with the renewal of the buffalo and the entire universe.

American Indians also kept healthy by the teas they drank like for instance, to keep cool they drank a tea made out of wild cherry bark,rosehips,orange peel hisbiscus flowers spearmint leaves and lemon grass

To sleep they made tea out of peppermint chamomile,catnip, valerian root,passion flower, strawberry leaves and scullcap

For Medicine tea made out of Spearmint, gota kola, wood betony,rosemary,eucalyptus,and ginseng leaves.

And for romance, a special brew of White Oak bark,muira puama ginger root,Damiana, rosemary,angelica root,marjoram,celery seed, missouri snake root and ginseng root.
I guess they had a special blend and knew how much to put of what in it.

Now we can go out and plant gardens with these gifts from nature and have fun brewing our own teas.
:)

Tea anyone...have a Samovar

I have always loved the idea of making tea in Samovars.
My cousin, once upon a time ago, brought me one antique, having no idea of how much I would love it.

I never used it as I wouldn’t even know how, but I polished it and cleaned it and then would sit for hours admiring its’ handicraft.

In my imagination I could see this Samovar in it new shiny state being used where?
Maybe in a nice cultured home where tea was prepared, in the English afternoon fashion, or maybe it lived in a poor old farmhouse, keeping old hands warm or maybe it lived in a teahouse (called a traktir), and its tea was sold like we sell coffee today in the shops.Or maybe it had a fair amount of travelling to do since coming from the 18th Century, it went through civil wars, the Russian revolution and two world wars.

Maybe it had several owners who died many times over and now it came to me, here, all the way to Canada. If only it could talk….. what stories it would tell.

The very first Samovar was created in Tula, Russia, in the 1800’s by a man named Lysitsyn
( by the way, the root word, lysa, means fox loll).
Lysitsyn was a gun smith. He designed this samovar for him self, to run on charcoal.
The tea from it was sooo delicious, that the idea caught on and spread like wild fire and before you know it, Tula became famous for its’ Samovars.
Today’s Samovar is used as a decoration piece or it can be bought in an electric model. Like the Faberge Egg, it comes in many styles and colors. They are still wonderful topics of discussion, as you sit serving your guests, the best cup of tea in the world.