Lavender’s Blue Dilly Dilly

~Lavender’s Blue Dilly Dilly, Lavender’s Blue. ~Children’s Nursery Rhyme

I love lavender. There are four bushes in my yard. The odd part is that unless you are near them you can’t smell lavender, even in 100 degree weather. I always though the smell would waft across the yard. For Mother’s Day a few years ago, Daughter Sarah gave to me the most fabulous Lavender Linen Water, which she purchased in Okinawa. I have used it sparingly on my pillow before bed. It smells as if a tiny bit of heaven has landed upon my pillow before sleep. Since the bottle is almost empty, it’s time to get a new bottle. After reading the comments for each commercially prepared lavender water, I decided to make my own. Using your own recipe means you can make the scent strength to your liking.

Lavender water materials

Materials:

• Empty jar to store finished lavender water in. Mark as “lavender water” – I use two bottles, one for making and one for storage.
• witch hazel
• water
• Lavender oil – purchased online. I tried to make my own from my lavender flowers and it turned brown. Yuck!
•  4-cup measuring cup (forgot to add to picture)
• funnel
• coffee filters
• spray bottles

Directions:

1. 4 cups of Water – add to the mixing bottle
2. 1/4 cup of  Witch Hazel – add to the mixing bottle
3. 15 – 35 drops of Lavender Oil – add to the mixing bottle. I just kept adding drops, shaking and smelling until it was the strength I liked
4. Put cap on bottle and “Shake, shake, shake; shake, shake, shake” – you’ll notice that the mixture is cloudy. Oil and water don’t mix.
5. Pour the mixture back into the measuring cup. Wash the mixing bottle, otherwise oil stays to the sides and goes back into the filtered mixture
6. Using a thickness of two coffee filters as filter paper place in the funnel. TIP: In labs we always wet the filter paper for two reasons: 1. The filter paper sticks to the funnel so unfiltered mixture doesn’t run behind and get into the filtered mixture and 2. The dry paper doesn’t soak up any of the precious mixture you are filtering.
7. Filter the mixture back into the mixing bottle.
8. Repeat Steps 5 – 7 until the mixture looks almost clear and you don’t see any oil floating on top of the lavender-scented water.
9. One last filter into the clean, storage bottle.
10. Fill the spray bottles. I filled three: one for upstairs, one for downstairs (dog bed), and one for Curls.

I’ve been using the spray when I iron. The fabrics for the baby items I’ve been making have been sprayed with my lavender linen spray. I like to iron anyway and this is just a bonus. It’s recommended to store wool in lavender since the smell repels moths, I’ve been spraying this on my hands and in the air around my spinning. Let me know if you make some and how much you enjoy it.

I’m off to the doctor’s today with Emily so I can listen to the baby’s heartbeat! Hurray!