Say What? Mosquitos, Ticks, and other pesky bugs.

My daughter is allergic to mosquitos, or I should say mosquito bites. Is that what they do when they suck your blood? Anywho, if a mosquito “bites” her she swells up and ends up with a nasty rash that won’t go away for days. I am sure you can guess we go to great lengths to keep mosquitos off her and that worked great until last summer. However, last summer she started to have a horrible reaction to store bought mosquito repellent. She ended up with what looked like a chemical burn all over her arms and legs. This happened with several types of repellents, including organic repellents. Let me tell you, organic repellent is expensive; especially when it just sits on the shelf because it doesn’t work.

Last summer my oldest son went to sleep away came with the Cub Scouts. He was super excited and really did have a great time. I went out of my way and probably way overboard to make sure he had everything he needed to be comfortable, including insect repellent. I knew he would come home all dirty and in desperate need of a shower and boy did he ever. But I never imagined he would be covered head to toe in little insect bites, he seriously looked like he had chicken pox. The first few days we just kind of laughed about it, and then we tried to make him more comfortable with oatmeal baths and every type of anti-itch cream available. The poor kid was miserable from all of these bug bites and they just wouldn’t go away. Of course just as they started to heal he would scratch them and they would become open sores and the process started all over again, over and over and over again. Weeks and months went by and we could not get a handle on these bites that were now infected and just horrible. The oldest monkey ended up with a nasty staph infection and was on antibiotics and a steroid. Let’s just say it was stressful for about 5 months. Almost a year later you can see scars on his body because of all these bites. The point of this is commercial insect repellent just does not work, at least not for my little monkeys.

I am from Washington State and I never in a million years had to worry about ticks or Lyme disease or anything like that growing up. I remember the first time my daughter had a tick I freaked out and I wanted to take her to the emergency room so they can remove it. I have heard all of these crazy things about making sure you get the whole tick out, the heads being left in the skin, just crazy things that I didn’t know how to deal with. My husband kind of laughed it off and got the tick out and threw it in the toilet. I never expected that to become an almost nightly routine, or at least a few times a week issue. This girl just attracts ticks to her, no matter what we do or how we try to keep the ticks away and out of our yard.

This summer we are trying something new. We are going back to Mother Nature to keep nasty mosquitos, ticks, and other bugs away from my kids and house. Lavender is a natural repellent, so we are looking at planting some lavender in our yard, especially around the areas the kids play. But the thing we will do right away is make our own bug repellent from essential oils. Some of the oils that help to repel insects are lavender, basil, lemongrass, and citronella essential oils. I am sure there are more but these are the few that I have found in my research and the types that I wouldn’t mind using. Now make sure you use essential oils and not an aromatherapy type oil. Below is the recipe I will be using and then there is another version of the recipe.

Homemade Insect Repellent Recipe:
15 to 25 drops of essential oils. I will use Lemongrass, Basil, and Citronella. (to make things simple I will use 10 drops of each)
½ cup of coconut oil.
Slowly melt the coconut oil, you can do this in a microwave, or with the use of a double broiler, or sitting it outside on a hot day. When the coconut oil is melted (and it does not take much) just add the drops of essential oil. Ladle the mixture into a small jar and place in a cool area. This repellent will be more like a balm instead of a liquid.

If you want a liquid repellent add 30 or so drops of an essential oil with ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar and ¼ cup of water. Mix together in a spray bottle and there you go – liquid insect repellent.