recycling your christmas tree/make wisky&body scrubs

My mother tends to keep her christmas tree up for few months after christmass until needels fall off them selfs. Kupina the dog was having none of that and on the 3 kings day one ought to take the tree down traditionaly, she jumped on to the table where the tree was trying nestle into the minature holly crib, and she knocked down the tree, smashed all the baulbals and the ceramic figurines.

I retuned to Zagreb, where despite evolving from decorating the aloevera cactus like last year, we still did not have a tree, instead wintery pine branches nestled in a jug decorated as much as the branches could take. As its time to take the branches down i tought why not burn some like insence insted simpley trash it, and to my wonder the pine brances produced the most sweet pine smell when burnt. There eruekad an idea.

I decided to try disstiling the branches the way one might distill lavander flowers to get oil. I have no equipment of course, and hae absolutley no patience to wait until i get some, once this idea formed, dropping everythinng else, I seton exppertimenting with what there is in the kitchen. Making a cardboard and aluminium lid for a cooking pot with a hole in the top, which i filled with pine branches and water, salotaped a plastic tubing around the hole of the lid and streched it into a hole of another clear pot. As the matter began to boil evaporation condensed and ran into the cool pot, thus I have now pine essence or wiskey.

When this system suceeded, and i still had pine left, to not waste it i cut all the needels into a jar, covered it with salt, shook it aobut for half hour with a little water and judst now had a delicious shower with this as a body pine scrub!