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Text Cody Doyle Photos Focus in Photography
The use of essential oils is becoming increasingly more prevalent in today’s society. The benefits are undeniable, and the risk or side effects are nonexistent. In the days before we started to really think about the adverse effects that storebought products can have, essential oils were, essentially, unheard of.
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any people are now recognizing the benefits from extracting these oils from plants that nature provided for us. Essential oils can be made from grasses, flowers, roots, fruit peels, twigs, pine needles, resins and bark. Unlike manufactured, synthetic aromatics and oils, essential oils have healing qualities. They can improve memory, change or enhance our mood and can also ease pain and other symptoms of illness.
Sierra Essentials Holly Redpath, founder of Sierra Essentials, says when she was a little girl her mother used to burn candles frequently. Although they smelled delightful, after years of burning unnatural, synthetic candles, she discovered the walls were covered in soot. She also attributes her mother’s respiratory problems to prolonged use of paraffin candles. She decided to find a way to make candles that still smelled heavenly, but were eco-friendly and toxin free. She found soy wax. Besides being much healthier, soy candles also burn 50% to 70% longer than petroleum based candles. Founded in 2008, Sierra Essentials’ natural, eco-friendly candles and oils (along with soaps, balms and spritzers) are crafted in Tahoe and Truckee. Redpath’s business was formed from friends and co-workers asking her to make her special soy based candles for gifts and personal use. So, late at night she would melt soy wax and create her candles; tying small strings around them to make them pretty, and using eco-friendly packaging, such as recycled jute bags as containers. Holly says that it has always been about her nose; a self-described “smelly girl”, she knows a good thing when she smells it. “For some reason the recipe has come out the way it has,” she says. And from that recipe another small, ecofriendly, successful business was born. Sierra Essential’s products are primarily carried online at SierraEssentials.com; also in a few shops around Truckee and Tahoe. However, you can find them locally at Never Ender at 119 Thoma Street. Come in and smell the candles, beautiful soaps and get some all-natural lip balm. If we don’t need to, why would we use anything other than what nature gave us? Reno Tahoe Tonight 95