Football games and cool temperatures. Sweaters and crunching leaves. Pumpkins and apple cider. It’s all just around the corner. Whether you’re ready to dig out the Halloween decorations or not, there’s one sure way to prepare for fall – spices. We found the four best ways to use spices to get yourself in the mood for fall this year.
Scents
Who doesn’t love a fall-scented candle or air freshener? Unfortunately, all those scent-producing products fill your air with toxic chemicals. If that’s not enough, they’re expensive too!
There’s a great all-natural solution to filling your home with safe, warm, and inviting smells this fall – simmer pots!
Keeping a pot of water on the stove or in your crock pot simmering with spices and fruit can smell amazing. There’s even a bonus of adding humidity to your house, a common issue in fall.
We found a few simple recipes to get you started, but simmer pots are a great chance to experiment with scents and see what works best for you and your family.
Simmer Pot Recipes:
- 3 apple slices, the rind of an orange, 3 cinnamon sticks
- 1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 tbsp vanilla extract, 2 cinnamon sticks, a tsp of nutmeg
** all of these are per 4 cups of water
** each cinnamon stick can be replaced with ½ tsp of ground cinnamon
In the Kitchen 
Using fall spices in the kitchen doesn’t just make your house smell amazing; it also gives you delicious food and drinks.
Now is the perfect time to pull out your cookbook, call up your mom, or hit the internet for some recipes. Maybe bake some cinnamon pumpkin bread or make apple cider. This is the perfect opportunity to get some scraps and spices for your simmer pots too!
Decorations
Decorating your house with some spices is another excellent way to make your house look beautiful and smell good too! The easiest way to decorate with spices is using something that you might find in your backyard – pinecones.
If you get your pinecones from outside, first bake them in your oven for an hour on 200-degree heat. This not only gets them to open, allowing them to take to the other ingredients better but also kills bugs and bacteria. If you buy your pinecones from the store, you can skip this step.
Once your pinecones are ready, it’s as simple as putting them inside a large zip lock bag and adding essential oils – we recommend cinnamon. Shake them up and let them sit for up to 2 weeks. The longer you wait, the more potent the scent will be. Then put them in a leftover mason jar, decorative bowl, or glass vase, and you have a beautiful fall-scented decoration.
Bathroom
Did you know that spices don’t just smell and taste good, but they’re also good for your skin? From anti-aging to acne to eczema, many of the spices we think of for fall are great for your skin and will also make you smell amazing! The easiest way to get these benefits is making your own sugar scrubs – a surprisingly easy thing to do!
Our favorite sugar scrub base is brown sugar and coconut oil. Then you add whatever spices you like (cinnamon, apple pie spice, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, whatever else you want to try) until it smells how you want it to. Ensure you keep your scrub in an air-tight container to enjoy it all season long!
