Chey, A good way to use ground spices is to make them up with applesauce into ornaments (or just plain small quarter-size discs for your potpouri). I've used ground cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, pumpkin pie mix...any old ground spices needing replacement. You can then add these to your potpourri in muslin sacks with no "leakage" problem. They're easy to make, keep their scent well with no preservative, make good tree decorations or package tie-ons too. I've made pomanders: stuck cloves in oranges and just rolled in cinnamon and they dry well and smell good for a long time. On the other hand, my dried pomegranites (spelling wrong?) really don't have any scent once dried. Haven't really made potpourri myself...I received some as a gift and it has a strong lemony odor...besides fruit rind strips and bits of dried flowers/leaves it has wood shavings/chips which seem to be soaked in lemon extract. I thought if it ever needed renewing, I'd just try adding more lemon extract...smile. Hope someone else can be more helpful. josh Here is a link that might be useful: CINNAMON/APPLESAUCE RECIPE

hi you got mail whisst

Thank you, Shauna. No, I'm not really interested in trying to market myself out too much at this point. I'm just about the right amount of busy right now. Who knows what the future holds, but for now I'm happy with the way it is. My Main Street storefront open house was great, and I'm thinking of maybe expanding that to another nearby small town next year, if I can find some space to rent. I think if I ever did quit my job it would be to start up my own shop. Making those large wreaths would probably be a great moneymaker if you had the market for it. If you shop the sales and have a good wholesale supplier, the profit could be huge. Wow, Brenda, that's a lot of stuff to organize - I can see where you'd have a time with it. DH ran into Yorkton yesterday and got one of those 'project organizers' at Canadian Tire. Spent about 3 hours or so putting it together and it's just the ticket for my needs, which is mostly paper and desk/computer stuff. I have one of those rubbermaid totes for hanging files, and that works pretty good for everything else. As much as I'd like to get started on more crafts, at the moment I'm dealing with a pretty good case of tennis elbow so I need to take some time to rest it. It started last fall after I planted the last batch of lily bulbs and has gotten progressively worse - the christmas crafting didn't help it at all - probably made it worse. I also need to start doing all those things the physiotherapist said, like the exercises, stretching and icing. If it's still plaguing me in the spring, I'm in trouble.

Sjarz I would love to see your craft but dont like the idea of haveing to join somewhere to see them, could you post your photos here so we can all enjoy seeing them! oddie