Sweet smelling home - scented diffuser in less than an hour for 10cents.

With the snow back it is certainly not a day for throwing open the windows to air the house. However, with one very old and one very young cat the litter tray is an essential yet smelly addition to the hallway, so I need something to help keep the house smelling sweet.

Very recently I have been seeing these new variations on the candle/oil burners, which consist of very pretty bottles full of nice smelling liquids with thin bamboo slivers which diffuse the scent. Very nice I though until I saw the price!

Having walked away from the store horrified at the cost, I though I might have a go at making some myself. I walked back into the store and bought a pack of the bamboo canes, at only 10cents for 12 sticks even I managed to scrape together enough change from the depths of my handbag for these.

Unfortunately I don't have the pretty tiny little bottles but what I do have - and keep finding in every ploughing of the garden - are these little vaccination bottles. These are used by the vets locally when they come round to vaccinate the cows, and often these get dropped and missed in the clean up. I tend to gather them up and keep them, and now have quite a little collection of them going on.

I thought I would experiment with a few scents that I had in the house.

I started with some vanilla essence, watered down slightly with some cooled boiled water. This smells really lovely but quite strong, so I have left that in the hall.

My second attempt is just some rose water. This is very subtle and needs a closed door to drap the scent in the room, bedroom for that one.

The third is some cooled boiled water with a couple of drops of citrus essential oil. This little bottle was one of my Christmas presents and I actually wear it like perfume most of the time, just a drop every few days on my scarf or a jumper. Very zesty and fresh. Anyway, because it was completely colourless and I wanted something I could see working I added a couple of drops of food colouring and now it is a lovely bright green. The last photograph shows how the bamboo stick draws it up to diffuse it.

All three diffusers work, all three throw lovely scents into the air and did not cost a fortune.

Very pleased with this little project.