Money I Spent: About $9 at Blue Eagle Mystical shop for some almond oil (carrier oil for essential oils) and this little incense thing. (Explained more under Thoughts.) Also $12 at Walgreens for a prescription.
Money I Avoided Spending: Didn’t “shop” around at either Walgreens or Blue Eagle. Could have easily had fun shopping sprees at either place!
Money I Made or Found or Saved: eBay – sold some Noritake dessert plates for $12.50 and an empty RayBan case for $10.
Use-it-Up Challenge: Still with the leftovers! Though we did have some new not-leftover bacon for dinner in the BEST CAPRESE BLTs EVER (romaine lettuce cup, mayo, burrata cheese, bacon, tomato, basil, EVOO, balsamic).
Thoughts: So my trip to Blue Eagle was in the pursuit of a potential future side-side-hustle. As I trimmed some juniper and pine trees this weekend, I thought, we have a CRAP LOAD of pine needles and juniper branches and juniper berries. I wonder if we can make anything out of them? Are they good for anything? So I started researching and found that people make and sell (and buy) juniper berry essential oil, and also juniper berry smudge sticks, and also pinon pine (or other kinds of pin) incense and smudge sticks. Smudge sticks being those wrapped bundles of dried herbs that you burn like incense. (OH and people also make smudge sticks out of MULLEINS. Of all things! So yeah, I might have a whole business model here.) On eBay and Etsy a small 4″ smudge stick could sell for about $4-5. A large 9″ or so one could sell for $12. A blend of stuff in it (say pine + juniper or juniper + sage, etc.) could raise the price a little. Juniper Berry essential oil could sell for $10 for a little roll-on bottle. Roll-on bottles cost about 30 cents apiece empty. Carrier oil per item would be about 50 cents apiece. So, not sure if I’ll start up this little side business or not, but I’m definitely going to cut some juniper and start it drying just to try it out. If it works out, I will try to sell on eBay. When farmer’s markets open back up, maybe we could sell there. I would also not be above foraging for materials in the woods 😀 like wild sage, etc. If we could sell these cast-offs from the yard, along with cut cholla skeletons, that would be the ultimate thrifty side hustle use-it-up challenge win!
Fiscal Fasters 