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Fight mosquitoes with citronella candle options

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citronella garden gnomeI had a request inquiring where to find some citronella candles for mosquitoes a couple days ago so sharing some of my finds.

Here’s a citronella candle offering a new slant on the garden gnome. I’m not sure what’s up with the blue color but it’s different and can be found at Clean Air Gardening. I’m not a big fan of gnomes but my daughter gave me a tiny one and I didn’t have the heart to tell her so it’s sitting on my desk.

If you’re looking for a more traditional looking candle, check out these votives called Bug Away from 100Candles or citronella pillar candles from HGTV Market Place.

If you want to make your own citronella candle, check out CraftBits simple citronella candle project instructions.

Citronella candles do help if you sit close enough but it’s still best to have some back up protection.

Thanks to Cathy Wong, I found several other natural mosquito repellents you could try. Apparently, repellent containing 5% fennel oil is 84% more effective against mosquitoes after 90 minutes.

See Natural Mosquito Repellents for more ideas.

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Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch Patterns

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.