I placed those pretty flowers in water on a table in my room and went off to school. When I returned home, they were gone the victim of toddlers and my mom. Somehow one of her daycare children ended up with a petal in her hand or near her mouth. When mom called poison control, she discovered rhododendrons are poisonous and had to administer syrup of epicap to ten kids. At least it was a nice day; they all were able to throw up out in the back yard.

Not until my middle children were in second and third grade did I learn about really using plants. I had finally gotten to keep outside plants alive, but still couldn’t keep indoor plants living. A parent volunteer at their school helped the kids start a garden. I learned about calendula and nasturtiums from them. Once I started the journey, there was no end.

1. Calendula

We used calendula in our salads. The flower added a nice color, and the taste was gentle. However, calendula oil has an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory property to it.

2. Mint

Mint grows wild and will take over the yard or field it’s in around here. It has been known for years as a tea with honey to help a sore throat. The scent can clear the sinuses. Just this last year, I learned that it also can help with headaches.

3. Rosemary

One of the first plants that I bought and did not kill afterwards was rosemary. I bought it for its pungent smell and to use as an herb in cooking chicken or fish and making cheese and rosemary biscuits. I soon added it to plantain with mint tea to help clear the sinuses. Rosemary oil works with tea tree oil to help unclog the sinuses as well. (If you can’t tell, I have sinus issues. So, anything that helps keep them clear is of high interest to me.)

4. Lavender

One of my favorite plants, but I can’t seem to keep it alive so I’m thankful for my niece who has a ton in her backyard, is lavender. I love the smell! The aroma is soothing to me, but my niece can’t stand it. So, to each her own. Lavender tea made from the flowers is wonderful to help with upset stomach. The stalks can be thrown into lemonade for a delightful taste, but how do I use it? I mostly use the lavender oil to relax. The scent helps promote sleep. I’ve even found rubbing some of the oil on my feet at night help me drift off to sleep (not like that’s usually difficult for me to do). Lavender also is a great anti-inflammatory and will help with sinuses and headaches.

5. Plantain

I remember playing with this weed growing up. I’d pick the grain-like stalk and pluck the little parts off, throwing them to the wind. Little did I know that this plant could help with a cold, act as a band aid, or take away the sting of a bee! It is a natural antihistamine. I’ve written a blog on how to use it to make tea.

6. Aloe vera

The one plant that I still have growing in my house that isn’t about to die is an aloe vera plant. I started it from a small start one of my kids brought home. It’s grown and spread in its basket. It’s not the healthiest it could be, but it’s still alive! The best use I’ve seen for aloe vera is to take a section of the leaf and squeeze out the juice inside for burns. I remember doing this as a kid.

7. Basil

Wait! Isn’t this an herb used for Italian dishes? That’s the one! I’ve just discovered its healing properties this week, and it’s on my to-be-purchased list as an essential oil. According to several sites it says basil can help with asthma, sinus issues, and migraines. However, I did find warnings of using it in more than food quantities.

Greetings, this is Kyn. Kandi welcomed me to her site to chat with you all. I’m a trained healer, and I use my pouch of herbs to make teas and compresses and to heal minds. However, not all things found naturally are good for you. Take dragons for instance, they’re one of the most wild creatures I’ve ever seen. They can do great good, but I’ve seen them blow fire and burn a person badly. You might not have dragons in your world, but Kandi told you how her ma had younglings sick all over the yard. So, do your own research and check with your local healer.

Many of you don’t have the access to Philippi Canyon like I do, or you don’t want to go through the hassle of distilling the plants into oils. If so, Young Living’s a wonderful company that sells high quality oils. Wherever you are on the road to staying healthy, I wish you the best. May your dragon fly true!

Suntea

Summer memories are filled with suntea. Mom would use a glass gallon jar, fill it with water, and add tea bags. Then it sat on the porch in the sun for an hour or two until it was just the right shade of brown. Then we’d add sugar and lemon. Even to this day, as soon as the weather turns warm and sunny, I pull out a clear container add water and tea bags and set it in the sun.

Kandi’s Suntea

1 gallon cold water in a glass container
3 Stash Chocolate Hazelnut tea bags
1 Stash Peppermint tea bag

Sit in sun until dark brown. Then serve sweetened or not with ice.

It was a warm spring day with a hint of summer heat. The morning started with the heat of the bright sun beating down on the girls’ backs as they flew into Boeskay to do their market shopping for the day. Later that afternoon, the heat had intensified. The girls relaxed with some of Duskya’s iced tea out in the yard under the shade of an oak.

“Serena,” Carryn said, “what do you want to do after you’re promoted?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know what I want to do,” Carryn announced. “I want to stay right here and help Ma and Da. I might even try to help Da with the hatchlings. He is so good with the little dragons.”
From Dragon’s Cure, book 4 of the Dragon Courage series by Kandi J Wyatt

Tea Parties

In April of my freshman year, our family moved. For the first time since third grade, my mom didn’t have to work to keep the kids in private school because there was no private school to attend. So, each day after school, we were met with a tea party. Grandma’s tea cups and saucers and Mom’s fancy dishes held tea with some snack to go with it. My sister and I would sit with Mom and chat about our day. These tea parties set the tone for the purpose of a cup of tea.

I remember a time after being married and having kids that I returned to visit a friend who was more my parents’ age than mine. She met me at the door with a welcome greeting, led me to the dining room table covered with a nice tablecloth, and set the water on to boil. We sat and chatted over a cup of tea. Later, my kids had tea parties as well. Sometimes it was with play dishes and other times with the china. One summer, I made sure to have a tea breakfast every morning using the good dishes.

Tea parties are a great way to connect with your child or a friend.

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A little hand pulled on her own. “Come on, Grandma,” Glen said. “Mere told me to get you. Will you give us tea and tell us a story?”

She bent down to his level and tickled his tummy. “You want a story?”

He laughed, unable to talk, but Mere had rounded the corner and answered, “Yeah, Grandma. Tell us a story! One ’bout riders and dragons.”

Duskya looked them both in the eyes. “Have I ever told you about the rider who didn’t want to be a rider?”

“No!” they both said in unison, their eyes wide in amazement.

“Well, come have some tea, and I’ll tell you.”
From Dragon’s Cure, book 4 of the Dragon Courage series by Kandi J Wyatt

Leaf tea

When I lived in Ecuador, I distinctly remember a season where I came down with a cold. The locals came bearing gifts and advice to get rid of the cold. One of the gifts was a twig. “Heat this in water until it boils, and drink the broth.” I smiled and nodded, but there was no way I was going to drink a branch! It wasn’t until at least five years later when I was pregnant with my youngest that I learned about making my own tea.

Tea from the yard

My midwife introduced me to plantain. I had come down with a cold; so she led me out to my yard and found the weed. She picked a leaf or two, brought it back inside and created a tisane, all the while explaining that Plantain, what I had always thought of as a fun weed to pick the seeds off, actually is a natural antihystamine. When brewed with lemon and honey it sooths the throat.

Differences in Teas

About that same time, a tea shop came to town. It became my second to youngest’s favorite hangout. Unlike my grandpa, he despises coffee but loves tea. So, we’d often go for a cup of tea and sometimes a scone. We learned how to store black tea, and how to brew tea leaves. We, also, learned the difference between black and green teas and tisanes. (Black tea is made with fermented leaves, while green tea is made from non-fermented. Tisanes are anything other than the tea leaf camellia steeped in hot water.) We also discovered that green tea and tisanes are made with almost boiling water, while black tea must be boiling. Knowing what I know now, I’d love to return to Ecuador and take the manzanilla branch that was offered to me so long ago and make homemade chamomile tea!

“If I can have some hot water, I’ll make tea,” Kyn said.

“I will go get it,” Ben’hyamene offered. “I will, also, see how many rumors we will have to put out.”

“Thanks, Ben’hyamene.”

Kyn reached out to Deverall’s thoughts and found them completely tangled. Healing this man’s mind would be like having to unravel the knots that had formed when he braided dragon leads as a youngling. It was going to take work. Kyn wondered how much time he would need.

Ben’hyamene returned with a kettle of water. “You owe me, ray’a,” he said as he entered. “The isha of the house is very curious. Not only did I have to spin a tale about our sick and slightly intoxicated brother, I had to promise to bring her some of your tea. It had better work as well as you indicated.”

Kyn looked at him. “What do you mean? I never indicated how well it works.”

Ben’hyamene stared at him. “I could have sworn you told me. So, I told her. She will take a cup.”

“Okay. I should have enough for everyone.”
From Dragon’s Revenge, book 3 of the Dragon Courage series by Kandi J Wyatt

First off you will need your photo for your background. You can use your own or one from a free source such as unsplash or pixaby. Deviantart also has good free stock, but make sure you check each artist’s guidelines for using their work. (Some are free no matter what, while others want you to credit them or only use on Deviantart.) What kind of photo do you need? Actually, any with texture. I am using one that has barnacles, sand, rocks, and even a chiton. What would create texture? Grass, small leaves, pebbles, concrete, shingles, wood. Really, anything with lines in it. It won’t be the main picture so you’ll be okay with just about anything.

Step 1: Set up your canvas

We want to open up a new image in Photoshop. Go to File>New.

It will open up a dialog box.

Now is when you can choose the layout of your final image. If I was going to do a flyer for an event, I would switch the pixels to inches and use an 8X10 format. Be careful where you put your numbers. Width comes first, so this formatting would be a landscape layout. For a Twitter image, I keep it at pixels and use 880×440. Your resolution will be important as well. How large are you wanting your image to be printed? If it is just a Twitter graphic, 200 pixels/inch is fine. If it is going to be an 8×10 flyer, you may want to bump that to 300-600 pixels/inch. I’m going to use a Twitter graphic as an example. Once you have all the boxes how you want them, click okay.

Step 2: Opening a new image and pasting it as a layer

You now have a white background the size you had indicated. We’re now going to work with layers. A layer is almost like a separate piece of paper on top of your background. The paper itself is clear, but whatever you put on it, will cover up the layer, or paper, underneath. So, all that white that is showing right now, is going to disappear when we bring in your photo. To bring in your background photo, we are going to open it in another tab. Go to File>Open.

You’ll need to find where you stored your photo. Usually, that’s in pictures. Once you have your photo open, you’ll use the select tool. It is located on the side tool bar and is the second tool down.

There are two ways to select your photo. You can either click and drag the crosshairs tool that you now have until it covers all the picture. Or use Ctrl (or Command on a Mac) A. It will select everything. You will now have a white dashed line around your image. Use Ctrl C to copy it. Click on your tab with your white background that is your drawing page.

Use Ctrl V to paste the image into your workspace. Now, if your image is like mine, I suddenly only have a small part of my image available to view.

Step 3: Scaling an image

I have several options. I can leave it like it is, or I can scale my photo or move it around. To scale the photo, go to Edit>Transform>Scale. You now have little squares at the edges of your photo. You can click and drag them to size your image and you can click in the center of your image and move it around. Adjust your image to the size you want it and then click the check mark at the top of the screen.

Now, you have just your normal photo sitting in your image at a size you want to display or print. It isn’t ready yet, but we now have an interesting background, but it isn’t ready to have any print added to it, because you wouldn’t be able to read it. So, we are ready to change that. Now, you’ll need to know what you want to do with your image. Do you have another photo that you want to use to display with your words? For example, I wanted to do a quote from author Niki Krauss for a Twitter chat. I used her book cover as the base color for my photo and the color of her text as the color of my text.

Step 4: Working with colors

How did I get the color? We’re going to use another tool, the color picker. It is the sixth tool down on the sidebar.

You will need to open up your image that you are using as a sample color. Just follow the steps for opening an image up above. Once you have it open, position your mouse over the color you want and click.

Now you will want to go to the third tool up from the bottom on the sidebar. You will see two colors in little squares with an arrow at the side. You will notice the first square should be the color you chose from your image. You will need a second color for your text. So, click on the arrow and the colors will switch spots.

Now you can click on another area of color in your main photo to choose a text color. I chose a color from the path in my cover. You should see that the square box with color is the color that you picked. If the top square is not the color you want your background to be, click on the arrows to make it come to the front. I notice that we now have three tabs open. You will need to go back over to the tab with your image on it. It should be the first tab.

Step 5: Brushes

Next we are going to use the brush tool. It is two below the eyedropper or the eighth from the top on the sidebar. Once you click on it, you will see that the top toolbar now has several different things on it. We want to make our brush big. So, at the second tool, when you click on it you will have the availability to adjust the size of your brush.

Slide the little arrow over to the right. As you slide, you will see that the numbers get larger or smaller. You want a brush size of at least 116 px.

Step 6: Layers

Now, we need to create a new layer. The easiest way to do this is to use the keyboard. Press Ctrl (Command on Mac), Shift, and the letter N all at once. Or you can go to Layer>New>Layer. Now you have a dialog box open. You can put a name in the box like background color and click okay.

Nothing seems to have changed. We’re about to change that. Use your mouse and click on the image. Hold the click and move the mouse around to completely cover your image in your chosen color. My color looks very similar to our original, but you’ll notice on the far right side on the bottom it shows my layers. I have three.

Step 7: Layer Opacity

We’re now going to change the opacity of our background color layer. It will enable us to see what is underneath it and still give us some color as well. To do this, go to the bottom right corner. You will see the layer’s menu. At the top of the layers menu, is a section called opacity. When you click on it you receive a slider bar. We are going to slide it to the left now. If you slide it all the way to the left, you won’t see your color at all. Experiment with what works for you.

For my photo, I think 83% opacity is about right. However, I’m not liking the chiton right there in the middle. I think I am going to go back and adjust the scale.

If you want to do the same, you will need to click on the layer in the layer menu marked layer 1. Then go back through the steps to adjust the scale.

Step 8: Text tool

Now that I have it the way I want it, I am ready to start typing in my text. You will want the tool that has a T on it. It’s eight up from the bottom.

You will need to now change the little square color boxes at the bottom of the side toolbar to the color you want for your text. Click on the arrow to switch them around. Once you have clicked on the text tool, the top toolbar changes. You will notice a color box at the top. It’s third over from the left.

Click on it and a dialog box opens up. Move your mouse around and you will see it is now the eyedropper tool. Go to the square at the bottom of the side toolbar and click on the color you want for your text. Then click okay in the dialog box.

Now you are ready to move the cursor down to your image and click where you want to insert your text. You can adjust your text to be left, right, or center aligned by the tool buttons beside your text color. Play around with it. You may also need to adjust the font size. You can highlight the whole text by using Ctrl and A or by selecting it with the mouse. Then you can adjust the font size just as you would in a document. As you can see, I need to make mine larger.

Now, that I’ve adjusted my text, I found that it was very light. My problem was in the order of the layers. Since I had gone back to fix the background image, when I clicked text, it put it under my background color. So, I simply clicked on my text layer, and drug it up in the order on the layers menu.

Now, I’m ready to add one more image and call it good. I will add some text to give my website and be done. I will use the same steps as above to copy my image, paste it into the new graphic and then size it. I will use the text steps to add my webpage to the bottom. My final step will be to save my project. File>Save saves it as a Photoshop file. I’ll do that so I can open it up and adjust it later if I want to change the quote or something like that. Then I will use File>Save As and choose jpg out of the dialog box. That way I can share it online.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll try to walk you through your issues.