Answer: Anarres Natural Health Apothecary according to several independent clients!

Why "happy place"?

Maybe you breathe so deeply when you come in, inhaling the aromas of whatever we've been concocting drying or formulating that day. (We've just been through a cycle of making hundreds of packets of incense, and so we've witnessed a lot of people inhaling deeply as they come in!)

Maybe you stare longingly at the shelves of yummy wholesome ingredients - the cocoa and shea butters, the glass jars lined up with coconut, jojoba and hemp seed oils, the dispensers with salts, sodas and waxes from near and fairly traded from afar, and amber, blue and frosted glass bottles with shiny gold and white caps...

Maybe you catch a glimpse of the kitchen and gaze wide eyed at all the bottles and jars and canisters and cabinets filled with bottles and baskets filled with drying herbs. We apologize for the clutter. It bothers us. But our visitors without fail say something like "oh no! I love it! It's wonderful!"

The thing is, I know what you mean! Truth be told, my inspiration is the Perth Apothecary, where my grandmother dropped me off on our shopping trips from Awaba, the summer home my grandparents built on Adam Lake.

This sort of thing makes my heart flutter:

And when I see this I feel I'm in heaven:

And the thought of learning to make those fragile cubes of pressed lavender bath salts, those purse sized soap papers with embossed Victorian covers, the Moroccan rose soaps wrapped in coloured tissue secured with foil labels.... even making olive oil gives me joy.

JOY. Deep in my bones the rightness of creating Beauty and Value, Usefulness and Science, Experiment and Traditional Technique brings me great JOY. The revelation of emulsification, the discovery of a better, possibly older way, the learning of a new property or traditional use of an herb opens the heavens to me.

I feel SO RIGHT. I FEEL so HOPEFUL for myself, for all of us, because I am learning HOW to make, to create, Beauty and Utility.

I hope you experience joy like I do. Even better if you feel joy learning to DIY your own cosmetics, body care and botanical medicines. I hope you join me because sharing my deepening understanding of these wonders of Creation is like falling off a log for me. It's my passion, and I want to share it with you.

Because as trivial as it sometimes seems to me to love making body products, I really do think it's one beginning of changing the world for the better.

So I'm going to create a video about why I believe that's true. Maybe I'll rewrite it into an article. And then I'll script it to become a speech. A great big awesome juicy funny life changing speech that I hope will be a TED talk and a major motion picture someday... okay I'm kidding about the latter.

In the meantime, if you can tell me what makes DIY - making your own stuff - a happy place for you, please email me or better yet, send me a video clip. If your clip makes it into my WHY DIY Video, I'll gift you a workshop! Come by Anarres Apothecary any Saturday in February to share your love of DIY by telling us where your happy place is and why you DIY!