Homemade Potpourri

Here is a project I have been considering for years - homemade potpourri. I have long had a fascination with this. During the before children season of my life, I read all sorts of books about herbs and potpourri and had dreams of owning my own herb/flower farm.

Skip ahead many years...When we moved onto our 4 acres here, dh and I really thought we might utilize our land to become "flower farmers." We planted several large test gardens and I worked my tail off that first year. Through that, I learned some important lessons. First, that dh liked the idea of this but was TOTALLY uninterested in committing to the WORK involved. Second, as a mother of young children (only two at that time), I couldn't do it all myself. So, I let the weeds and pasture grass that I had been waging war against take over and in the blink of an eye, my gardens were literally gone.

Fast forward again. Now, I am a homeschooling mother of four children, but my oldest ones are to a point of being able to do some actual work. My second daughter has always had a total fascination with flowers and potpourri and I have often thought I should share some of what I learned way back when about growing and making the stuff. Recently, as I was unpacking some books I lingered a bit over my herb books and an old flyer from the San Francisco Herb Co. dropped out. It is filled with wonderful sounding raw potpourri ingredients as well as the recipes and directions on how to put them to use. I had always wanted to try this but, being pretty poor in our early years of marriage, never actually did it. This morning, I thought of this again and googled the company and found they have a really nice website. Not only do they still have recipes, you can order them ready to assemble yourself. I am thinking that this could be a great project to do with my daughter. We could discuss the different ingredients: where they come from, how they grow and what they are used for.

If this is something that you are interested in, you can go to the link above and click on "Potpourri-Recipes" to see all the variations they offer and the prices.