Review: The Home Apothecary by Stacey Dugliss-Wesselman

Title: The Home Apothecary: Cold Spring Apothecary's Cookbook of Hand-Crafted Remedies & Recipes for the Hair, Skin, Body, and Home
Author: Stacey Dugliss-Wesselman
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Quarry Books
Publish Date: July 1, 2013
Source: I received a copy from the publisher; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You love DIY.
• You're interested in natural ingredients.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "With the resurgence of small-batch, locally crafted boutiques and brands that mimic heritage brand ideals, today’s consumers are looking for a product with an emphasis on locally sourced production and ingredients. They are already stocking their pantries and fridges with natural, whole foods and relying on real ingredients for better health. The Home Apothecary offers fresh ideas for caring for the body on the outside, too. It features a bounty of recipes: more than 75 original, natural, and absolutely chemical-free body care products from face masks to bug repellent to soothing lotions. Cold Spring Apothecary’s nationally recognized green-luxury beauty and home goods formulas will be taught in such a way that readers will soon be experimenting on their own."

My Two Cents:

I'm a total make-up/ beauty product junkie. I just love it! I'm also interested in using more natural ingredients. As much as I love all of my lotions and potions, I realize that some of them have some pretty icky ingredients. Here's where "The Home Apothecary" comes in! This book is jam packed of not only a really vast list of natural ingredients and what they do but it also a bunch of recipes for making remedies and body care products and it's awesome.

This book was really fascinating to me. As I think I've mentioned before, I have a little garden at my house, that I absolutely love. With this year being our first full year in the house, it was the first time that I had a chance to pick out plants to plant in my garden. I did it really haphazardly. If it was pretty, I put it in. As far as herbs go, if I liked it or it sounded interesting, it went in. After reading "The Home Apothecary," there are so many more things that I want to plant next year so that I can make more of the recipes in this book with my own plants, which would be so cool!

Some of the ingredients in this book would be very easily accessible at a grocery store or a good, robust health food store. Other ingredients may be a little harder to come by but that's what the internet is for.

The methods for making the recipes go from the very easy to intermediate or hard. Although with a little practice, the recipes look like they'd be accessible to just about anyone. Overall, I know this is a resource that I will be going back to over and over again.