Goals # 14 – 16 – Make my own perfume, learn how to make candles, and go for a bike ride

Due to starting a new job, I haven’t had much time to blog, but I have managed to tick a few more things off my list!

Making my own perfume is something I have wanted to do for a while, mostly because I am obsessed with vanilla scented things and have struggled to find a good vanilla perfume. I also try to use natural products where possible, so wanted to try making my own natural perfume. I have also been keen to try making my own candles (vanilla scented, obviously) as I love candles and thought it would be a nice skill to learn.

So, a few weeks ago I had a lovely crafty afternoon making some homemade candles and perfume. For the candles, I bought some oils off the internet (vanilla, neroli and jasmine), some pipettes and roller ball bottles and found a good recipe for making a perfume oil – then I set to work mixing oils. After the perfume was made it needed to be left to settle or brew or something for a month, before being ready to use, and last week it was finally ready! Unfortunately, while it smells quite nice, it doesn’t smell very vanilla-y. This is mostly because I struggled to find an undiluted vanilla oil so it wasn’t quite as strong as the others. It also worked out quite expensive for a small bottle of oil! However, I did have fun making it and would probably try again at some point.

For the candles, I bought a kit off the internet, which had everything I needed and good detailed instructions. It didn’t take long to make them and they were fun and easy to make! The only problem was  they did need to cool for quite a while and I only got two moulds so it would have took days to make all 10, but I ended up only making four candles and set the rest of the wax in cake trays to make wax melts. Here’s a pic of the finished candles!

Last weekend I also ticked off another goal to go for a bike ride. While it wasn’t the world’s longest bike ride, it was pretty long for me and I was out for about 3 hours in total. It was actually one of the most fun goals to tick off so far and was nice to spend a day riding around in the sun, and has actually inspired me to get out and about on my bike more often. 🙂

 

 

Goal # 8 – Knit something

I love to learn new skills and have been trying to teach myself to knit for a while, using a book I bought online and some advice from my mum. However, I always seem to find other things to do when I sit down to knit so had not really managed to master even the basic skills yet or knit anything beyond a gauge swatch.

To motivate me to get on with it, I decided to add a goal to this list to knit something – anything really, just so long as it was identifiable and served some sort of purpose (even if that was just decorative). Initially, I had a different project in mind for this, however I soon realised my skills weren’t quite up to what I had been planning just yet, so I decided to start with a basic scarf for this goal.

So last week, I learned how to cast on and some other basic skills and got to it. A few hours later I had knitted myself a scarf! Not only was I full of pride to find that I had actually created something I could use, but I enjoyed saying casually to people, “Oh yes, I knitted this the other night while I was watching a film”, which made me feel super productive!

Here’s a photo of me wearing my first ever knitted creation, which will hopefully be the first of many:

Me and my scarf 🙂