Extracting Fragrance from Fresh Herbs and flowers

I've been experimenting with my garden lavender attempting to find the best way to extract the fragrance for cologne, insect repellent, and room spray. In the past, I've tried soaking fresh herbs in vodka for a week, but the herbs smelled like they went bad. I tried it again with lavender for a shorter duration, just overnight, and the next day it smelled like it had turned. I could still smell a hint of lavender under a heavy grain smell. Instead of throwing it out, I added water and boiled it in the microwave for four minutes. Somehow this worked, and although it has a brown cast to it, the liquid smelled very good with a light to moderate lavender scent. The heavy brown scent went away.

I'll be using this lavender water as a base for my next batch of insect repellent spray.

Here is a recipe that I'd like to try for rose petal perfume using fresh rose petals. This involves soaking the petals overnight in oil.

Lavender Tea Recipe

This was a very fragrant tea! I added more lavender from my garden than was called for in the recipe. I also added some fresh lemon balm. I had to pass on the sugar.

Ingredients:

* 1-1 1/2 teaspoon dried lavender blossoms or 2 teaspoons fresh lavender blossoms
* 2 tablespoons earl grey loose tea
* heavy cream
* sugar cubes

See recipe here.

I enjoyed this tea with just the lemon balm and lavender for a calming bedtime tea.

Homemade Coffee Facial Mask

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons very finely ground coffee(I used regular ground)
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
8 tablespoons whole milk or cream(I used half and half)
2 tablespoons molasses(not in original recipe)
Read instructions and entire recipe here.

Coffee has astringent and antioxidant properties, and tightens and tones the skin.

Milk has antimicrobial and cleansing properties.

Cocoa powder softens the skin and has antioxidant properties.

Molasses has firming, softening, and exfoliating properties which is more gentle than honey. It's also good as a conditioner for damaged hair.

Results: Frightening to look at, but pretty good results! My skin was much tighter, but not dry, and very soft. It helped with a few blemishes as well. I've tried honey masks before and they were really too strong for my skin. This was a perfect blend for my normal to oily skin. I had some left over, so I've stored it in the fridge for next week.

See more at the Make It From Scratch Carnival.