It is almost Christmas! This year seems a bit anticlimactic for some reason. Maybe because part of the joy of Christmas is being at home with nothing to do but watch movies, eat good food and hang with family. Yeah, well we have been doing that since March! I want OUT! I am so sick of my house! What about you?

But…, since we are at home for a bit longer I want to try and make the holidays special and a good memory to think back on. One way is holiday traditions that you have with your family and the other is smells. I have said this before and I’ll say it again-smells are SO important! Smells are so closely linked with memory. More so than any other sense. Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions in the brain related to emotion and memory. There ya go-a bit of trivia!

So how can you make your home smell more like the holidays and less like stinky boy? Candles are a great way-my favorite candle in the world is Cire Trudon, but they are EXPENSIVE and I do burn my candles- I do not save “nice” stuff. I don’t want to go through 17 candles over the next few weeks so I put a pot of potpourri on the stove and my whole house smells like Christmas.

This is SO easy and SO inexpensive! There is no real “recipe” but I’ll put one below.

During the holidays you can find random pine branches in the floral section of the grocery store

If you cannot find whole cloves you can use ground-your pot will be a bit more “messy” but it will get the job done!

Have a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and hopefully normal 2021!

Winter StoveTop Potpourri

An easy and inexpensive way to make your house smell like the holidays!

Ingredients

3-4 Pine Sprigs (off your tree or you can buy small bunches at the grocery store)
1-2 Cinnamon Sticks
1 Sliced Orange
1-2 teaspoons whole cloves
4-5 cups water