Essential Oils

After Sun Spray DIY

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Happy July and Happy Canada Day to all of the Canadians! I’m sure we are all pretty happy to enter into the second half of this unusual year. Here in the Seattle area there is a common understanding that summer weather does not begin until July 5th, and true to form it’s windy, drizzly, and cool this morning (see above pic). The sunny days are coming though and if your skin tends to burn easily, this after sun spray is easy-peasy to make.

Peppermint and lavender will be the stars for this after sun spray, as well as aloe vera juice and/or witch hazel. Peppermint needs to be used with care because it can irritate sensitive skin, so although it is cooling, use it in moderation. Lavender’s healing effects on burns started the study of aromatherapy as we know it, so it’s fabulous on its own in this recipe if you don’t have peppermint or are too sensitive to it. Aloe vera is a great plant to have around your house in case of burns, or the juice can even be used as a facial mask for its firming action. Witch Hazel has tannins which help soothe sun burned skin and you can use it alone as the base if you don’t have aloe on hand.

–2 oz spray bottle (preferably dark glass)

–1oz witch hazel (can be plain or infused)

–1 oz aloe vera juice

–10 drops lavender

–5 drops peppermint

–Store in the refrigerator for up to one month, or use 2 oz witch hazel instead of aloe and store for 6 months in a cool, dark place.

Don’t forget to label your bottle with what it is and the date you made it. Writing down your recipe for next time is always beneficial too, as well as any notes such as ‘too much peppermint’ or ‘try aloe juice next time’.

May your July be a fresh start to this year with many happy summer days ahead.

 

Mother’s Day DIY Gifts

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Below is a blog post I wrote two years ago. If you are like me, these holidays are sneaking up even more than ever in this strange time. I’ve read that we are currently in the month of “Marprilay” which sounds about right to me and if you agree, take heart. Making bath salts might be something you can do easily while sheltering in place because Epsom salts work wonderfully and you can find them at drug stores and grocery stores so no need for anything from hard to get to places. Here’s the post from 2018:

What mom doesn’t treasure her bath and beauty time? Whether you are making a gift basket for your mom as an adult, or helping little ones make gifts for your partner, natural DIY pampering gifts are easy to make and will actually be used and appreciated. If you are working with little ones, essential oils need to be handled with care because they are so potent they should not be put on the skin directly without a carrier, and also the scents can be overwhelming if you are using a lot all at once.

To make a custom jar of bath salts, you have some options. You can use sea salt, Epsom salts, pink, grey, or black salt depending on where you are and what you fancy. Epsom salts are best known for aches and pains, but pink and grey salts can help with those too, and they have a high mineral content. Sea salt and black salt are detoxifying, and all the salts are good for the skin. You can also blend different salts together if you can’t decide or want to make sure you cover all the salt benefits. Whatever salts you use, just fill a jar with them, and add the essential oils you want in a ratio of about 10-25 drops per cup, depending on how strong you want the smell. Mix with a chopstick and cap tightly.

To make it a moisturizing bath soak, you can almond oil or grapeseed oil to the salts slowly, mixing the blend as you pour. You will want about 1 3/4 cup salts, with 1/4 cup oil. When the oil and salts are all blended together, add your essential oils and stir some more to make sure everything is evenly distributed. Since this is a total of 2 cups, you can use 20-50 drops of essential oils.

If you are making this for someone who takes more showers than baths, then a salt scrub is another option. You want more oil than salt in that case~ 2 cups of almond or grapeseed oil, 1 cup of fine sea salt, and 20-50 drops of essential oils. You can always make an herbal oil first, then add that to the salts. Add the oil directly on top of the salt, then add the essential oils and stir well. You can use sugar instead of salt for a gentler body scrub. Prepare the exact same way as the salt but use brown sugar instead.

Another option is to add dried herbs to the salts. This of course looks lovely but can make a huge mess, so adding a large sized muslin bag or two to the jar of bath salts is a nice touch. The bather can spoon in however much they want into the muslin bag, then place it into the bath for a nice soak that they don’t have to worry about cleaning up later. Lovely herbs to add are rose petals, calendula flower tops, seaweed, and/or oats. The proportions are completely up to you, and in fact you can just use herbs for an herbal bath without any salts, or just add the salts and herbs together, or add essential oils to the mix as well. There are no hard and fast rules, so just follow your aesthetic sense or look to your (or her) favorite products to get an idea of what proportions might be most appreciated.

As always, be sure to label whatever you make and to write down the recipe. Here are some more DIY gift ideas if bathing isn’t the best treat for your gift recipient. Have fun with whatever you are making and Happy Mother’s Day to all the hard working mamas out there. Please subscribe for weekly posts about herbs, natural health, and green beauty, and please share with anyone who might benefit from this article.

A Different Paradigm

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This has been an era of polarity for a while now, fueled by social media and the strange but very real pleasure hit we get when we feel ‘outrage’ (more about that phenomenon here). There’s an empowering feeling to have strong opinions about something~ vaccines, politics, moral codes, etc~ and then have those opinions validated by others, whether they be FB friends, radio hosts, or TV personalities. They have become the way many people define themselves and it’s become accepted, even encouraged, to make fun of the other side and dehumanize them. It seems opinions, defined as: a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge (google dictionary but italics my own), are being mistaken as facts, and furthermore, used to bolster self esteem and promote polarity. Why? Why should any of us settle for this?

I’ve seen this playing out with the current COVID crisis and supplements/foods. It seems you have to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ using nutrition and supplements to bolster your immune system. Why does this tunnel vision persist? The word complementary is defined as: combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other or another (google dictionary), and that’s exactly what complementary medicine does best. All sorts of health enrichment exists beyond modern medicine, from broccoli to meditation, cardio to vitamin C, it is not revolutionary to say that there are things that we do every single day to keep ourselves healthy so why do some get upset by the idea of using herbs and other supplements to boost the immune system and health in general….? I just don’t get it.

Maybe it’s time we could embrace a different paradigm and use the traditional knowledge built up over centuries around herbs and other natural substances on a daily basis and use modern medical care when we need it. It can be a stretch for some to understand that we actually live in a paradigm where health is viewed in a specific and not holistic way. Our current view is that health is absence of disease and disease means uncomfortable tests followed by pills with bad side effects and we just accept all of that because that is modern medicine. I agree that sometimes the tests are necessary and even the pills are necessary with their harmful side effects, but we do have more control than that viewpoint allows. Herbalism is not about using herbs instead of pharmaceuticals~ it doesn’t work like that. Herbalism is looking at health holistically and supporting the body through diseases, aging, personal tendencies, inherited conditions, and more through balance which is a life-long endeavor. This means always striving for optimal health, not just the absence of disease, and when disease presents then supporting the body through it with or without modern medicine, depending on the severity and personal needs.

Maybe if we could all open our minds to the idea that we don’t live in an either/or universe, it would translate to better health, grander living, broader thinking, and more humanity in general.

Healthy Wishes to All

Herbs During the Plague

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Anyone else been thinking about the Plague recently? Back in the middle ages there weren’t many options for medicines other than what grew within walking distance of one’s community. Actually, that’s true for almost all of human history, so it’s no wonder that people turned to herbs during the Plague years.

Below are a couple of old sayings during Middle Ages era of Plague:

“Eat valerian and pimpernel And all of you will be well”

“ Take of sage, rue, briar leaves, elder leaves, of each a handful, stamp them and strain them with a quart of white wine, and put thereto a little ginger, and a good spoonful of the best treacle, and drink thereof morning and evening.”

It was common to wear garlic around the neck or to tie other bundles of herbs around different parts of the body such as wrists to keep oneself safe, and the Plague doctors themselves also implemented herbal armor. Those long beak-like masks famous from that era were actually constructed that way in order to house herbs in the ‘beak’ area. The herbs were either fresh, dried, or soaked in vinegar to make an extract, then placed in the tip of the beak so the doctors would breathe in the herbal air instead of the ‘bad air’ because at that time they thought the disease was transmitted through air instead of understanding there were particles involved. The herbs varied depending on the place, but some common herbs used were: juniper berries, mint leaves, myrrh, rose petals, camphor, cloves, and straw.

Another use of herbs from the Plague years which is still around today is in the formation of ‘thieves’ oil. Thieves oil has a great story to it, though whether it is more history or mythology is anyone’s guess. The story has several variations, but basically they all say something along the lines of this: During the Middle Ages there were four thieves in France who used to rob the graves (or the houses) of those who had died of the Plague and managed to not get ill themselves. When they were eventually caught, they were given a lighter punishment in return for telling how they did it. The four thieves admitted they used herbs (most likely soaked in vinegar at that time) to keep themselves from getting the disease. They knew how to do this because among them were perfumers and spice traders who understood the anti-biotic and anti-viral properties of their goods. Their blend has passed down to us through all these centuries, though the actual recipes vary depending on who’s making it. Usually the blends include: clove, lemon, eucalyptus, cinnamon and rosemary, and then different makers add in their own special favorites. This is almost always an essential oil blend now, instead of a vinegar extract, and it can be found under names such as Thieves oil, Four Thieves, Bandits oil, Medieval oil, etc, and of course you can make your own. Just use a mix of antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal essential oils to make a powerful anti-germ blend and add it to a carrier to wear as perfume or diffuse it in the air with a diffuser.

Vinegar extracts aren’t nearly as common as they used to be, but one recipe has endured for a long time, though no one knows exactly when it began. This actually just came up in a court case because one company wanted to trademark the name ‘Fire Cider’ but other herbalists and companies resisted that since fire cider is a long time folk recipe that many believed should not and could not be owned by one company. The courts agreed and the trademark was thrown out so anyone can make fire cider and call it such. Fire cider is an herbal combination that boosts immunity, especially during the winter months, and seems to be more common in the Northeast of the U.S. than anywhere else from what I’ve observed, though I could be wrong about that. Beloved herbal elder, Rosemary Gladstar was one of the main people leading the fight to keep fire cider out of trademark territory, and she’s one of the first to pen a recipe that has been widely copied. Here is her version and you can watch her make it and follow along here:

Ingredients

1/2 cup ginger, fresh (grated) 1/2 cup horseradish (fresh, grated)

1 onion (chopped)
10 cloves garlic (crushed or chopped)
2 pepper, jalapeño (chopped)
1 lemon (zest of)
2 tablespoons rosemary, dried (or several sprigs of fresh rosemary)
1 tablespoon turmeric, ground
apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup honey (plus more to taste)

Instructions

Put ginger, horseradish, onion, garlic, peppers, lemon zest, lemon juice, rosemary and turmeric in a quart canning jar. Cover with apple cider vinegar by about two inches. Use a piece of natural parchment paper or wax paper under the lid to keep the vinegar from touching the metal. Shake well. Store in a dark, cool place for one month and shake daily.
After one month, use cheesecloth to strain out the pulp, pouring the vinegar into a clean jar. Be sure to squeeze as much of the liquid goodness as you can from the pulp while straining. Add ¼ cup of honey and stir until incorporated. Taste your cider and add another ¼ cup until you reach desired sweetness. Fire cider should taste hot, spicy and sweet. It is great as a winter time tonic and as a remedy for colds and coughs. Often people use it as salad dressing, on rice, or with steamed vegetables.

Just to be clear, fire cider is not a recipe originating from the Plague era, but it is a vinegar based recipe which is how most herbal medicines were prepared back then, which is why I’m sharing it on this post. Also, don’t worry about exactness with this recipe, as it’s a folk recipe that has many variations so yours will be just fine.

Stay safe and healthy and let me know if you make your own fire cider and how it turns out! Also comment with any herbs you are currently taking to keep healthy during this pandemic~ I’d love to hear!

Immune System and Moving

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Hello from the land of Limbo! I’ve been stuck in a moving delay with most of our stuff moved over to the next house and some essentials keeping us at the old house and quite frankly it’s been rather stressful and discombobulating. Add this to the whole living and working in the center of US’s coronavirus outbreak (Kirkland, Washington) viewfromworkand it’s been a wild ride for the last few weeks. Our schools are still in session, but all the businesses around here are insisting their workers telecommute which has at least been a boon for traffic. All the trips I’ve made between the two houses trying to locate our things has at least been through less congestion. Counting all the blessings I can at this point.

No one seems to know exactly how panicked everyone should be~ debates rage on if this is all overblown to this isn’t being taken nearly seriously enough. All we can do is take personal responsibility for ourselves and our loved ones and boost our immune system with the usual suspects: elderberry, astragalus, medicinal mushrooms, echinacea if getting sick, essential oils in a variety of ways, and general good sense. Probiotics are also smart, as is vitamin C, zinc, and pretty much any herb used in any way is going to be healthy for your immune system so if you are cooking at home, go heavy on the herbs and spices. Adaptogens help with stress, nervines with anxiety, and of course there’s CBD for all of it if that works for you. In other words, you don’t have to feel helpless and panicky. There are many natural ways to help us all move through these trying times. Now only if they would help move the last of my things to the new house, that’d be magical. ladybug

But, no worries, the movers are supposed to finish up this Friday the 13th…what could possibly go wrong?

Stay healthy, XO

Valentine’s Day DIY Gifts

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In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m reposting my blog post from last year. I hope you all have a lot of love this Friday, self-love, family-love, friend-love, and romantic love too. XOXO

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Homemade gifts made with heart and intention are perfect for the holiday that celebrates love. Valentine’s Day is a warm reminder during this cold season that love should be celebrated fully and joyfully in all its forms, from friendship to family, and of course that special someone. Everyone can appreciate an herbal gift that conveys not only love, but also health, beauty, and green thoughtfulness.

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What plant could be more associated with Valentine’s than the rose? A flower of beauty that signifies love, it also has healing attributes that qualify it as an herb. Drinking rose petal tea is relaxing, due to its mildly sedative properties, and it also has some historical use as a headache reliever. The petals are used extensively for skin health, anti-aging, and beautification, while rose hips are full of bio-available vitamin C. Rose oil makes a lovely base for a massage or bath oil, and bath salts with rose petals would make a relaxing gift that encourages self-care and rejuvenation. Baths full of rose petals are picturesque and you will see plenty on Instagram, but if you don’t want to clean up wet petals after a restful bath, I suggest packing them in a muslin bag. You get all the benefits without worrying about the messy clean-up afterwards. The proportion of salts to rose petals is completely up to you, but if you want to add essential oils to the mixture, keep the essential oils down to about 10-20 drops per cup of mixture. Example: 1 cup Dead Sea Salt, 1/2 cup rose petals, 15 drops of lavender oil, and 10 drops of rose absolute in jojoba. Mix all together in a bowl before adding to a jar with a tight cap for gifting. Don’t forget to add the reusable muslin bag inside the jar, or tie it on the outside.

Making a rose petal mask is another lovely way to gift roses and encourage self-care. Make a powder from dried rose petals either by using a mortar and pestle or a food processor. I actually use an old coffee grinder for making herbal powders and it works great. Mix the rose powder with either French Green Clay or another clay that suits the skin of your recipient (or yourself if this is a self-love gift) in the proportion of 1/3 rose powder, 2/3 clay. Example: 1 tablespoon rose powder mixed with 2 tablespoons clay. Store in a dark glass jar and mix one tablespoon at a time with either a water, a hydrosol, honey, or yogurt to apply. Actually, adding the powder mix to any of these one ingredient masks will make a multifaceted concoction, and you can choose if you want more of a firming, brightening, or evening out action. Leave on for 10-15 minutes, then rinse off with warm water. Skin will be moisturized, clean, firmer, and more even-toned.

Making a massage oil out of rose oil is as easy as adding the desired essential oils to the homemade rose oil. Aim for no more than 50-60 drops of essential oil per cup of base oil. You can also add in more base oils to the rose oil, so the mixture is more suited to the recipient’s particular skin. The heavier the oil, the more appropriate for dryer skin, and the lighter oils are more beneficial for oilier skin. Massage oil should not soak into the skin but rather allow for easy gliding, so sticking with sweet almond oil, avocado oil, apricot kernel oil, and grapeseed oil are good choices, especially when mixed together. Here’s a sample recipe including the aphrodisiac scents of rose, vanilla, and jasmine:

Massage Oil

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Making Massage Oil
1/2 cup Rose Oil (olive oil infusion)

1/2 cup Vanilla Oil (sweet almond infusion)

1/4 cup Avocado Oil

1/4 cup Apricot Kernel Oil

30 drops Sandalwood

40 drops Vanilla absolute

5 drops Jasmine absolute in jojoba

I hope your Valentine’s day is full of love for your family, your friends, your partner, and yourself. We are experiencing the most snow in most of our lifetimes here in the Seattle region right now so I’ll be herbal crafting away happily this week. I also managed to make my first sourdough loaf this past weekend and it turned out splendidly! There’s a pic on my Instagram if you are interested.

Thank you for reading and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Body Spray for Guys

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that my teenage sons were not big fans of essential oils. Then this past weekend my oldest asked me where we could buy some body spray for when he stinks after working out but can’t shower. I told him I would make him one and if he didn’t like it, then we could buy one. I really didn’t know if I could put together something he would like because his friend uses Axe body spray so I knew that’s what he was imagining. I honestly don’t know what that smells like so didn’t try to replicate it, which is probably a good thing since no doubt I would not be able to do so with natural ingredients, but happily, he does indeed like what I made him. I like it too so I thought it worth sharing. My other son wants me to make one for him now, but I’m waiting for an order to come in with his favorite essential oil, fennel. And by favorite I really mean the only essential oil he’s ever liked, so I think the wait is worth it. Here’s what’s in my 15 year old son’s body spray and I apologize for the inexactness. I didn’t realize I’d be sharing it and just threw it together in a bit of a hurry. Luckily I made myself write it down though so I can remake it:

2 oz dark glass bottle

about 1/2 filled with bay rum which I made a while ago

about 1/4 filled rose/vanilla extract which I also made

A little bit of distilled water so that the liquid almost reaches the top curb of the bottle

25 drops Sandalwood essential oil

10 drops Cedar essential oil

10 drops Bergamot essential oil

5 drops Frankincense essential oil

I capped it up with a spray top and let him know he needs to shake it every time he uses it. It really is a nice scent that a teen guy can wear, and really I’d say any guy who wants a subtle but masculine scent. I’m thrilled he’s actually using it and that he’ll be getting the emotional/mental benefits of essential oils without even realizing it.

Stay well everyone in this flu and virus season. And if you find yourself feeling worried about getting sick, remember that there are plenty of herbal immune boosters out there so instead of worrying, you can be proactive with keeping yourself healthy.

 

 

 

Spray Perfume DIY

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When making your own natural perfumes, you have plenty of options to consider. What scent? What base? What container? Most perfumes will either have a base of oil or alcohol, unless you are making a solid perfume which also requires oil but also beeswax, or carnauba wax for a vegan option. If you want a spray perfume, that makes it pretty easy to decide on your base because only alcohol will work with a spray top. There are other ingredients you can mix in with the alcohol, but the fundamental base should be an alcohol that is 80-100 proof, with vodka being the most common choice because it has the least amount of scent. You can find perfumers alcohol if you look around, but I like to follow the rule of ‘if you wouldn’t put it in your body, don’t put it on your body’ when making my own products.

I always have a perfume body oil that I use first thing in the morning and right before bed at night. I put it all over my torso and arms, sometimes legs too, and then it has to soak in before I put clothes on so that makes it confined to the above mentioned applications. Spray bottle perfume is something I like to keep on hand for applying before I leave the house or when I just need a mood lift from the scent, because no matter what is in there, it always lifts my mood. I even spray the inside of my coats because they need a little refreshing after so much use in the winter, especially since I tend to wear my coats inside quite often. I’ve actually tried to break that habit by putting a warm sweater or hoodie or something always accessible in the kitchen near the coat closet to make myself change out of coat. My aversion to being cold is a mighty one. Here’s the current situation here by the way:

snowmorning

Even my 15 year old son asked if I had any sprays he could use to freshen up before leaving the house last week and since I’d just used the last of my perfume I handed him a bug repellent spray that we had leftover from the summertime, and he thought that just fine. After spraying it he said that it smelled really good so I hope I wrote that recipe down in my notebook!

For the spray perfume I’m making today, I’m using homemade rose-vanilla extract and vodka with some of my favorite essential oils for winter. It’s a two ounce bottle, which means 12 teaspoons, and the general rule is 5 to 20 drops of essential oils per teaspoon. That means I’ll want between 60 (12X5) and 240 (12X20) drops of essential oil in my two ounces of alcohol base. (I made the extract with vodka, rose petals, and vanilla beans, so it is indeed an alcohol base, just an enhanced one.) I’m using about an ounce each of the two bases.

I decided to make this focused a bit more on mental and emotional well-being while my normal perfumes are usually all about the scent. January through March is not my favorite time of year so I thought some uplifting essential oils were in order. Here’s what I made:

Januaryperfume1

2 oz dark glass spray bottle

A little less than 1 oz vanilla-rose extract

A little less than 1 oz vodka

50 drops sandalwood

40 drops ylang ylang

10 drops clary sage

20 drops bergamot

10 drops frankincense

5 drops rosemary

This turned out to be a really refreshing scent. I might add more rosemary once the blend settles, but for now I like how it smells. I won’t know for a few days if it needs any changing as it takes time for everything to mix and mingle and meld together.

Thank you for reading and let me know if you have a favorite essential oil blend for the wintertime!

 

Essential Oil Sourcing and New Name

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The new year and new decade weren’t quite enough for me, I needed a new name too. This website has bid farewell to its overly wordy title of the past, and is now named “Blossom Herbs”. I resonate with that word ‘blossom’ on many levels right now, and it seemed appropriate for what I try to do here with herbal tutorials, videos, and such. It’ll take a while before I get all the URLs changed and other places BA&A is hanging out, but the new year and decade seemed like a good time to start and if I waited until I was ready to tackle everywhere at once, I’d never do it, so here’s to baby steps all around.

A consumer advocate group asked me to post a link to their research on essential oil companies. I looked it over and it seems to be a good overview, so I agreed to share the link (below). They took notice of Aura Cacia’s sustainability record which is one reason I choose to use their essential oils and other products often. That and they are so accessible since they are at pretty much every natural foods store, and of course of high quality. They also gave a good review to Mountain Rose Herbs whom I also buy from quite a bit, and if you do any kind of herbal crafts I’m positive you do too! I encourage you to take a look at the list and see if your essential oil company of choice is on there and what kind of review they received.   Here’s the link: https://www.consumersadvocate.org/essential-oils

I hope your first week of 2020 has been a superb start to the year. Thank you for joining me here whether it’s your first time or you’re a regular~ I am so grateful for the connections. By the way, that picture has a recipe serum to go along with it. You can find it on my instagram page if you are interested.

Peace, magic, and all the best to all of you for the next 51 weeks and beyond.

New Year, New You

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I’ve actually never gotten very into New Years resolutions very much. I tend to think in terms of personal goals and growth more around my birthday which happens to be on the first of a month when my surroundings are waking up to spring a bit, and it feels like a better time to me for renewal. But this year is different. It’s a new decade and last year was horrifically miserable, and apparently a lot of people had a seriously rough 2019’s, so I’m more than happy to see it dissolve into history and embrace a New Year with all the opportunities of newness it brings.

I’ve seen many statements about 2019 being rough because it was a year of growth, so I’ve tried to write down the ways I’ve grown to make it a true leaning and not something that has to be repeated over and over again for it to sink in. If you had a tumultuous year too, I encourage you to do the same. Don’t just be glad it’s over and jump into the next year as if it’ll be different now, instead write down what you learned, or at least have a long hard think about it if writing isn’t your thing. Make it conscious and dig deeper, because there are probably more nuggets of wisdom to uncover if you stay curious and courageous b/c it takes bravery to revisit painful things and experience the buried emotions. But it’s worth it. You have to experience the emotions before they let you be.

We all get this crazy reset opportunity once a year, and it always strikes me every single time how hopeful people are that they’ll be better next year, they’ll stick with their resolutions this time, this is the year they’ll really do it. So often the gyms are packed in January, semi-packed in February, and by March the old patterns have bullied themselves back in, stealthily disguised as life, and the world turns for another season of repetition. Don’t let that be you. Not everyone hits the gym in January, but most people do have a notion of what they want for the coming year, and if it involves you changing in some way, only you can do it. Whether you are more aligned with Virgil’s, “Fortune favors the bold,” or more Louis Pasteur with his, “Fortune favors the prepared mind,” there is decidedly more action involved than mysterious lady luck.

Cleanses and detoxes are ways to jump start any change because our mental and emotional selves need detoxing too, as do our relationships. These are the ones I wrote about last year and they are the ones I always turn to when I feel the need for a deep cleanse, especially the kitchari which that post has the recipe for. Speaking of ‘jump starts’, I read that in Denmark it is customary to jump off a chair at the stroke of midnight to leap into the New Year for good luck. I love how literal that is! There are so many global traditions for New Year’s that all are an effort to bring good luck (I compiled a list for my ESL class with more highlights from that down below) and it makes me wonder if that’s why people give up on the changes they plan to make, as in maybe they feel ‘luck’ and life aren’t cooperating fully so they surrender to it…? I’m guessing the people who hit their goals are the ones who rely a little less on fortune and a bit more on fortitude.

But a little luck never hurts so eat the grapes and lentils, wear the red or yellow underwear, and jump off all the chairs tonight~ life may not catch you where you wanted but you’ll land on your feet somewhere, that’s a promise.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2020. Here’s some global inspiration on how to spend this evening:

From Greece: An onion is traditionally hung on the front door of homes on New Year’s Even in Greece as a symbol of rebirth in the New Year. On New Year’s Day, parents wake their children by tapping them on the head with the onion.

In Ecuador they celebrate the New Year by burning paper filled scarecrows at midnight. They also burn photographs from the last year. All in the name of good fortune.

In some South American countries wearing colored underwear will determine your fate for the new year. Red underwear means you’ll find love. Gold means wealth, and white signifies peace.

In Japan they ring all of their bells 108 times in alignment with the Buddhist belief that this brings cleanness. It’s also considered good to be smiling going into the New Year as it supposedly brings good luck.

Every year at the end of December people in a small Peruvian village fist fight to settle their differences. They then start the year off on a clean slate.

In Switzerland they celebrate the New Year by dropping ice cream on the floor.

In Romania they throw their spare coins into the river to get good luck.

In some parts of Puerto Rico, they throw pails of water out of their windows to drive away evil spirits.

And in Spain it is customary to eat 12 grapes, one at each stroke of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Each grape represents good luck for one month of the coming year. Eating grapes at midnight actually occurs in quite a few cultures around the world which begs the question, where is everyone finding grapes at this time of year? Good luck!

Cheers!🥂

Frosty Fleur