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Scented Pine Cones - DIY

11/21/2020

How to Make It | Scented Pine Cones

1) Soak pine cones in water for about an hour to get rid of critters if you got them from outside.

2) Lay the cones out on a foil-lined baking sheet and pop them in a 200º oven for about 30 minutes. This helps the cones open up.

3) Once they have cooled, place them in a ziploc bag. Sprinkle about 30 drops of Cinnamon Bark essential oil on the cones in the bag. Cinnamon Bark and Clove is also a great combo.

4) Let them sit in the bag for 1-2 weeks. Place in your favorite holiday bowl or garland and enjoy an amazing holiday scent.

In case you were wondering ...

A number of behavioral studies have demonstrated that smells trigger more vivid emotional memories and are better at inducing that feeling of 'being brought back in time' than images.

Also, if you have magnolia pods, those can be added as well!

Enjoy!

Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch

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Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes

8/3/2020

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Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes
by Cheryl L. McClure

Quench your thirst on a hot summer day and keep it chilled with these big ice cubes! They are so good to keep your beverage of choice chilled while it's in your glass. I found the large ice cube trays on Amazon. I like them because they are BPA free and they have a top on them so I can leave the tray in the freezer till I've used up the cubes.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon honey
2 Drops Lavender Vitally essential oil
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 lemon
Instructions:

Drop your lavender essential oil onto a tablespoon of honey and dissolve in 1/2 cup warm water. This helps to disburse the oils throughout.
Add the lemon juice to that.
Add lemon sections. Roll your lemon on the counter to loosen up the insides and wash it before cutting into eight pieces. Half them on and then quarter each half. Take seeds out as you go. Squeeze each quarter’s lemon juice into the mixture you have already started and then place each quarter in a section of your ice cube tray. Stir.
Pour enough of your mixture into each section to fill about halfway. Then go back and add a little more water to bring the level up leaving room at the top.

Since they float, I positioned the lemon quarters with the skin side up. Freeze.

Pour over your favorite beverage like Honey Lavender Lemonade, Topo Chico, Zyng or in plain chilled water!

Click this for the recipe >>> Honey Lavender Lemonade

Enjoy!

Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch

essenty.com/cherylintexas

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Honey Lavender Lemonade

8/3/2020

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Honey Lavender Lemonade
by Cheryl L. McClure

Here’s a simple refreshing drink you are sure to enjoy! Treat yourself to a glass of Honey Lavender Lemonade. It uses Vitality essential oils and Jan Paul really likes the lavender added to it. Lavender Vitality essential oil will add a sweet and slightly floral flavor that will be hard to forget!
🤩
Ingredients
☑️ 5 cups (1180ml) water
☑️ 1/2 cup (160 grams) honey
☑️ 1 cup (240ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 6-8 lemons)
☑️ 2 drops Lemon Vitality
☑️ 2 drops Lavender Vitality
☑️ Glass pitcher
💧
Instructions

Combine lemon juice, honey, Lavender and Lemon Vitality oils into a glass pitcher.
Chill in fridge
Serve over ice cubes and garnish with optional lavender sprigs, lemon slices or mint leaves 🌿

Adding lavender lemon ice cubes will bump up the flavor as the ice melts! See how to make them here: Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes

Enjoy!
Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch
🥰
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#freshlemonade #lemonade #quenchyourthirst #yltip #yleo #vitality #makeyourown #lavendervitality #summerdrink #fresh

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Fresh Guacamole Please!

5/1/2020

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Fresh Guacamole Please!
By Cheryl L. McClure

How's your guacamole? We love it fresh and feel so lucky when we get avacados from the store and cut them at the RIGHT time!! Sometimes they are too hard, sometimes too soft. But wow, when we make a good batch it's so tasty!

I like to halve my avocados and then score them while they're in the shell, then scoop them out.

One of the things I like to do is add essential oils to my recipe. We live out in the country making a trip to the grocery store, impractical. If I'm growing cilantro, I have it made though! Otherwise, Vitality Cilantro essential oil is the perfect match to flavor my guacamole. I also use Vitality Lemon and Vitality Lime essential oils. Usually a drop or two is enough for two or three avocados but you can start with one drop of each and go from there. As shown below, I make a little well in the center after it's all mashed up, add the lemon juice and then the drops of essential oils. Mix well, season and you're set!

You'd be surprised at the line of Vitality essential oils Young Living produces. They are dietary and can be used in cooking. You can read more on my personal Young Living exclusive website, Nature at its Best.

TIP

A tip I learned for leftovers: Put your leftover guacamole in a smaller container. Seal the top of it with water. Yes! Add a thin layer of cool purified water to the top before securing the lid and placing in the fridge. It will seal off the air that makes it turn dark brown. When you get it out the next day just pour off the water and mix. I do this when I make a large batch and know we won't eat it all the first time we sit down for lunch.

Here's the recipe:

3 avocados smashed up with a potato masher
1 or 2 jalapenos minced
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
1-2 drops Cilantro Vitality essential oils
1-2 drops Lime Vitality essential oils
1-2 drops Lemon Vitality essential oils
Salt and Pepper to taste
Handful of chopped cilantro if you have it
Add chopped tomatoes too, if you like that

Mash chilled avocados and add minced jalopenos.
Make a well in the center of mixture and add lemon juice, Vitality essential oils and season with salt and pepper.
Mix together and add chopped cilantro and tomatoes
Now it's ready to serve!

Enjoy!

Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch
yl distributor 1176855
essenty.com/cherylintexas

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Instant Pot Cilantro and Lime Rice

8/18/2019

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Instant Pot Cilantro Lime and Rice
by Cheryl L. McClure

We love a good rice recipe to eat with Tex Mex here at the ranch and this sounded so good! Not to mention, it tastes good!! Recently, my favorite home & health products company came out with Cilantro Vitality essential oil and I was excited to give it a try in this dish.

We use a 6 qt Instant Pot and it cooks rice perfectly every time so I did not hesitate to experiment and it turned out delicious!! Most recipes for the Instant Pot will use the same ratio for rice as for water, so makes it easy to remember.

We use it for a lot of different dishes, but FYI it's a great appliance for cooking beans from dry to done in no time!

Anyway, this side dish is so EZ to make but if I don’t have all the fresh spices, herbs and fruits, I have essential oils to replace them, right here in the cupboard!

Here are some of the Vitality line of essential oils that would come in handy for this recipe or to flavor any Tex-Mex meal!

You can find all these and more at essenty.com/cherylintexas - Use my member number to purchase! #1176855

While the weather was cool in the springtime, I was able to harvest my own from the garden and it was soooo good! I love all the texture and color with cilantro, but I find so often, that I want to cook something with cilantro and I don’t have any, don't have enough or it has gone bad.

We don’t live around the corner from the grocery store, so having essential oils is like having fresh herbs in a bottle! They're ready to use at any time.

It only takes a little, so use sparingly. The good thing is, you can use herbs fresh, dried or essential oils interchangeably or together in recipes. Don't be a fraidy cat! Experiment with your oils and herbs and adjust to your own taste, just start low and add from there.

Note, you will want to add all your essential oils after the rice has cooked.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups Jasmine Rice (or long grain white rice)
2 cups chicken broth (or water)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter to add to rice
+
1 drop Bay Vitality (Laurus Nobilis)
1 drop Cumin Vitality
3 drops Citrus Fresh Vitality
2 drops Lemon Vitality
2 drops Lime Vitality
2 drops Cilantro Vitality
1 drop Black Pepper Vitality
1 drop Orange Vitality
Butter or olive oil to mix EOs into

OR use fresh/dry ingredients
2 fresh bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
4 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons lime zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon orange juice
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Butter

INSTRUCTIONS:

Butter the inside of the instant pot.
Add 2 cups rinsed and drained rice and 2 cups chicken broth. Throw in 2 fresh bay leaves.
Set Instant Pot manual pressure for 4 minutes, after done, allow 11-18 minutes natural pressure release.
Add butter with essential oils or your fresh/dried herbs, combine all.
Enjoy!

This makes a double batch, about 6 cups, which I like because after I've used it as a side there are leftovers to use in a soup or casserole.

Hope you enjoy this dish and discover more ways to use this great line of Vitality essential oils in cooking. Let me know what worked for you!

Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch
essenty.com/cherylintexas
picklecreekranch.com

If you would like to order any of the essential oils for cooking you can do so through either website, you will just need my member number to order.
CL McClure - Member #1176855

You can order retail or save 24% by becoming a member. I'd be happy to tell you all about it!

Young Living is the leader in the essential oil industry because they have what no other company has, the Seed to Seal promise. I do not recommend any other oil besides Young Living.

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MYO Lotion Bars

3/4/2019

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MYO Lotion Bars
by Cheryl L. McClure

Don't you love the scent of soaps and lotions and essential oils? I do! Before I knew about the hazards of chemicals in fake fragrances and fake scents, I was a number one purchaser of those candles, perfumes and household products that you see all the time at the mall, in ads, on tv and such. Not anymore. I am done with that and choose a healthier alternative that I don't have to question and one that I feel good about exposing my friends and family to, because there is no harm in it. It's all good! At least that's what I aim for. Anyway, fast forward to now and guess what? We'll get to the lotion bars, but first this ...

We - well, ummm actually, I decided to become a beekeeper last year! And I asked Jan Paul to be my partner and I am so grateful he took me up on it!!

One of the ingredients in my lotion bars contain beeswax that we harvest at our ranch home, Pecan Branch Ranch. If you don't have bees, you can order beeswax online but be sure and get good clean, organic beeswax with no chemicals. After seeing the price of that, it makes me wonder if I should buy it next time. Haha! It's a lot of work to get a pound of wax when you have a small operation but I know where my beeswax is coming from so I will keep doing this. Plus, our home harvested honey is the BEST and you gotta have honey to get the wax!!

The first time we got our bees it was in April; a full hive and a nuk. It's all greek if you don't know about beekeeping, as we learned new terms along the way of this journey. To make a long story short, we harvested honey in July!! Our granddaughters were here and we had the best time. Once we did that, we were hooked. We want to do it again in spite of Jan Paul having to go to ER because of a reaction from multiple stings and losing one of the hives for whatever reason. We have done everything we know possible to overwinter our remaining bees and will start again in the spring. It's a learning curve for sure.

So.... one of the fruits of our labor is beeswax. FYI, this light and golden color beeswax comes from the frames we harvested honey from. Darker beeswax is typically harvested from what they call brood comb, where the eggs and bees are hatched. No less valuable, it's just a darker color.

Once the frames have been scraped and the honey/wax chunks placed into a filter, the honey drips out and is separated. We have a 5 gallon bucket with a gate at the bottom so we can then release the honey into jars. The remaining wax is washed and melted in water to separate the gunk from the wax. That whole step starts in a large crock pot, using a paint filter to put the rinsed wax chunks in and cheesecloth to keep it above the water as it melts through the mesh. (I tie the cheesecloth to the handles on the crock pot.) You usually have to go through that process at least twice to get the wax clean.

As it hardens in the water, it will release from the sides and form a solid block. You can see two wax disks in the picture, one light and one dark. After hardening, smaller pieces can be broken off and weighed for your recipe.

MAKING LOTION BARS
When I get ready to do the lotion bars, I boil water in the tea kettle first, pouring it into the crock pot, setting it on high. It's heated faster and now ready to melt the wax. I have a designated sauce pan for making lotion bars. This is what I put on top of the crock pot full of hot water. If you are out and about, you might see one at a garage sale and pick it up at a reasonable price. It's also good to have a crock pot designated for your wax type projects.

If no one has ever told you, WAX IS MESSY. I do everything I can to keep from getting wax on the floor or on the countertop. So whatever you do, prepare for that!!

Once the wax has been measured and melted, I add the other softer ingredients to melt all together in the sauce pan. Once all of those are melted together, I will add esse ntial oils. Stir. And then pour into the mold.

I position this cute bee mold on a foil lined baking sheet because I don't want wax everywhere in case I spill it. Once I fill each mold it doesn't take long for the bars to harden. They can be popped out of the mold, placed on deli paper sheets and tucked into a 2 oz tin that has a screw on lid. I like using the paper and tins. It makes it easier to get the bar out and put back in, especially right after using the bars on my hands. The lotion bar is slightly greasy because of the shea butter and coconut oil, but my hands love it and they NEED it, especially in the winter time!

INSTRUCTIONS
Measure and melt in this order. melting each product before adding the next:

1/2 Cup (4 oz) beeswax
1/2 Cup (4 oz) shea butter
1/2 Cup (4 oz) coconut oil
40-50 drops of essential oils

Pour into mold, allow to harden, store in a closed container. This recipe should fill your bee mold almost to the top on each one, to make 6. The last time I did it, I was short on the last one so I saved it for myself.

There are many recipes out there but what I found to work well is equal amounts of the three main ingredients that make up the bar. From there, you have variations you can experiment with, like, in place of the shea butter, you could use cocoa butter. You could use use 1/4 C coconut oil and 1/4 C almond oil in place of the 1/2 C coconut oil and so on.

This is the fun part! Choosing your essential oils for blends that you love! I only recommend Young Living essential oils because I know this brand can be trusted. Check out our Seed to Seal Promise and you will understand why.

Try various blends. The 40-50 drops can be a combination of oils such as:

25 orange, 15 clove, 10 myrrh or
10 drops each of orange, patchouli, sandalwood, neroli and myrrh

Mmmmmm! They smell so good.

I hope you enjoy making lotion bars and I'd love to know what variations you use! I have also attached artwork here for you to use on a label. Click on the LOTION BAR graphic to download the label. It's a PNG file so has a transparent background.

Happy Oiling!

Cheryl @ Pickle Creek Ranch
essenty.com/cherylintexas
picklecreekranch.com

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The Blog Page

Scented Pine Cones - DIY

Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes

Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes
by Cheryl L. McClure

Honey Lavender Lemonade

Honey Lavender Lemonade
by Cheryl L. McClure

Fresh Guacamole Please!

Fresh Guacamole Please!
By Cheryl L. McClure

TIP

Instant Pot Cilantro and Lime Rice

Instant Pot Cilantro Lime and Rice
by Cheryl L. McClure

MYO Lotion Bars

MYO Lotion Bars
by Cheryl L. McClure

Cheryl L. McClure

Categories

Archives

The Blog Page

Scented Pine Cones - DIY

Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes

Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubesby Cheryl L. McClure

Honey Lavender Lemonade

Honey Lavender Lemonadeby Cheryl L. McClure

Fresh Guacamole Please!

Fresh Guacamole Please!By Cheryl L. McClure

TIP

Instant Pot Cilantro and Lime Rice

Instant Pot Cilantro Lime and Riceby Cheryl L. McClure

MYO Lotion Bars

MYO Lotion Barsby Cheryl L. McClure

Cheryl L. McClure

Categories

Archives

Honey Lavender Lemon Ice Cubes
by Cheryl L. McClure

Honey Lavender Lemonade
by Cheryl L. McClure

Fresh Guacamole Please!
By Cheryl L. McClure

Instant Pot Cilantro Lime and Rice
by Cheryl L. McClure

MYO Lotion Bars
by Cheryl L. McClure