Wind, perfume, sun

Crazy wind yesterday, but sunny like today, so that's great.

Wanted to find cologne I could tolerate for a long while for John, but all commercial brands have fixatives and chemicals that slay me. Worked with my massage therapist, who also does aromatherapy to find a blend that I'm not allergic to. I looked up the basic elements to Drakkar on Wiki and took the list to her house and sniffed a bunch of stuff to see what I reacted to. I know I'm allergic to pine and geranium and sandalwood was iffy, but Frankincense smells yummy and I do well with citrus, mint, lavender, bergamont and the common cooking herbs like sage and rosemary.

We had to open the window and let fresh air in, because all the oils are potent and you end up feeling high. Yikes!

The method: hold a couple of open bottles to your nose and see how they smell together. Mix and match until you find the scent that makes you feel like human catnip. At one point I was holding several bottles at once.

Crazy how some scents completely clash. Example, I love lavender, but combined with an-oil-I-can't-remember, it was yuck. We added one drop of cinnamon to a yummy, nearly finished perfume and it ruined it. Totally skunked, had to start over. Blech! Very educational.

We ended up with this formula for men's cologne:

Frankincense: 26 drops
Lavender: 14
Peppermint: 5
Rosemary: 13
Juniper berry: 8
Lemon: 4
Bergamont: 3

Fill small spritzer bottle 1/4 filled with vodka, 3/4 with water. Add drops. Shake well, spritz. I really like it, smells good and John and he likes it, too. I might experiment to see if I can refine it further, but I'm very happy. A bit of guidance helped, and it would have been very expensive to buy a bunch of random essential oils to play on my own.

Will definitely play with oils again!

You know that's going into a book sometime :)