Today I tried out my idea and used unscented shampoo to make my own Christmas scents shampoo.  I used clove and orange essential oils in one and rose in another.  I just took small amounts from the gallon jug of shampoo to use.  The problem is that the unscented shampoo wasn’t unscented.  It had an ugly odor of whatever it was made of.  The label said no alcohol, yet I smelled something resembling alcohol.  So the essential oils did not win out over the smell of that “unscented” shampoo.  Instead, it mixed with it to create an unpleasant scent.  I have asked the company to refund my money.  I should get an answer on Monday.

I decided to mix the essential oils with water in a squirt bottle to spritz the dogs with instead.  I do that for air freshener, so why not dog freshener?  Clove and water make a very nice air freshener.  I love the smell of cloves.  This summer I read some articles on the Internet that orange essential oils would kill weeds.  Well, it didn’t.  At least not with the recipes I followed.  But it is a nice fragrance, so I use that to freshen the air, too.  Peppermint is one of my favorite invigorating scents, so I mixed some essential peppermint oil with some lotion and rubbed my feet with it after a particularly hard day on my feet last summer.  Then I had a systemic allergic reaction.  I won’t be doing that again.  Essential oils are potent, and they need to be handled with care.

After I gave dog baths, I sprinkled some grooming glitter on Raven (black glitter) and Leissl (gold).

I decided not to grace Luigi with sparkles, at least not this time.  He was so cute this morning.  He leaned his head on my shoulder as I worked on the computer.  He did that totally out of love for me and not because he wanted the rest of my cream cheese and bagel.

OK, so Luigi did work hard making sure I knew he wanted that bagel.  And yes, he got the thing, but I know that he loves me more than bagels and he did not get that one for free.  He had to show me he knew where heel position is while the plate and its pieces were nearby.  It took a lot of concentration for Luigi to get into the heel position when we were facing away from that plate.  That was the point where he could have sworn he was supposed to stand off to my side facing me (and the plate).  Silly boy.  But eventually, his memory returned as he realized it was to his benefit to recollect where the traditional heel position was, and the whole process got less painful for him to follow.  Bagel parts arrived faster when he quickly did what was asked.

Now for a bit of a vent.  I did some grocery shopping around 6 pm tonight.  I was in line and saw that the man in front of me had one gallon of Publix iced tea.  I mentioned to him that it was on sale as a buy one get one free deal.  He asked the cashier and she confirmed it, so he went back and got a second one.  Do you think he would have offered two measly words to me such as “thank you?”  Nope.  Nothing.  It’s the way of this place.  Rude and ruder.  There are hardly any manners here and when I do run across someone who is at least as civilized as my dogs – who do have manners – well, I just want to give them a piece of bagel and cream cheese!