SO, I forewarn all of of our family, grandparents, aunties etc, do not read this blog post, or if you do fake surprise and excitement to my kids!!!! There, my disclaimer is done, now on to the fun stuff!!!
Yesterday, actually, in the middle of Thursday night I had an idea, not great timing, but what can you do when inspiration strikes:-). So, Friday morning, with my fave little men in tow we headed off to the natural food section of Shaw's, to go spa gift shopping?! Ok, we were purchasing the items needed to make spa gifts for family and friends, and out PT too! We did not really have to purchase alot, but I did need to get 3 bags of natural sea salt, a large bag of sugar(will use most in the baking happening today), a bottle of extra virgin olive oil (the lightest one you can get, and the cheapest), a box or two of tea, and I splurged and bought avocado oil, and coconut oil, it comes as a solid in a jar for about $10 for 14oz, but can be used for a long time, in many applications so a good deal.. This is to make gifts for 5+ people, and it made upwards of 30 items to give as gifts, so SCORE!!!!!! The rest of the items I have in my pantry, and so will you if you do a bit of searching, so here are the recipes for the gifts:
Exfoiliting soap muffins:
all of those hotel soaps you likely have stored in your bathroom closet to use one day, dig 'em out
1/2 to 1 cup chopped oats
tea bags, mint, orange spice, chamomile are nice, but be creative
thyme or rosemary 1-2 tsp
1 cup of hot water
1 muffin tin for soap molds
Take all of your hotel bars and shave them on your cheese grater, I had the girls take turns doing this. Once you have it all shaved, measure it, we had approx. 4 cups of shavings (thanks dear hubby for swiping all the hotel bars for years;-), put this into a glass bowl . To this we added the chopped oats, (to chop I ran through my coffee grinder until almost flour like consistently), mixed well, then start adding your hot water by tablespoonful, mixing as you go. I added almost 3/4 cup to my shaved soap when I was done(but it is still wet, I could have used less water), then divide if you are making for men and women. At this point your soap will be sticky and stringy, like taffy almost, we added orange spices from a tea bag to the ladies soap mix, and a few bags of chamomile tea too(the flowers look nice), and mix until blended. Once done, we put the soap into our muffin molds and mounded them, like cupcakes. Let cool, then pop them out and let them dry before wrapping. For the men's muffins we added thyme and rosemary to the soap mix, then the rest is the same, mold and let dry. We will wrap these in cloth bags we are sewing today, but voila, a nice spa gift, easy for kids to make and cheap too!!
Coffee scrub
This is super yummy smelling, perfect for the coffee loving men in our lives!!
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c white sugar
3 tbsp coffee
5 tsp almond or sesame oil(we used olive since it is what we had)
5 tsp vitamin E oil(you can use your vitamins, just cut the ends of the capsules)
2 tsp honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
Mix all ingredients in a glass bowl, blending until consistent, then pack into coffee mugs, or glass jars with lids. We did find that it looked nice to put in the coffee mix, then swirl white sugar on top, like cream in the coffee, but it is nice, and smells great without that too.
Bath cookies
This is Gabe's fave gift, and he made it all by himself, it was cool, and realistic looking!
2 c sea salt
1/2 c baking soda
1/2 c cornstarch
2 tbs vit E oil (we used avocado oil here, you can also use grapeseed oil it is high in Vit E)
2 eggs
1/4 c chopped oats
5 drops essential oil(we did not use this since it is pricey, we used vanilla extract)
4 tbsp olive oil can be added if the dough is too dry to stick together
preheat oven to 350*
Gabe mixed all the ingredients as I added them, mix in the eggs well, and it will form a stiff dough.
Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheets,, and spread out the dough a bit. We baked these at 350* for 10 minutes, they came out lightly browned, and smelling like sugar cookies a bit. for the tag we will add that you add 2 cookies to your running bath water, and enjoy!!
Sugar cookie skin scrub
!/2 c sesame or olive oil
1 c white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp coconut oil
Mix all the ingredients, pack into jars and label, very easy, but you can add other oil scents to it for different "flavors", mint and coconut oil are nice(cheap coconut oil can be found in tanning oil, FYI)
Citrusy hand scrub
1 1/2 c sugar
1/3 c sea salt
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
3/4 c olive oil
1/4 avocado oil(use all olive oil if it is what you have)
1/4 tsp lemon extract (I found this unnecessary, since I added extra zest, but if you have it use it if you want)
Mix all together, and pack into pretty jars, label and give, it smells very nice, and looks pretty.
citrusy skin scrub in them, very nice.
Creamy skin scrub
This one is not really a recipe, but more of a use of things you already have. I have purchased different lotions, and find that some work well, some not so much. The ones that are not so great were used yesterday to make this winter time skin scrub. Pour lotion into a bottle, mix in sea salt and sugar, until you have a nice sludgy consistency, gritty but still pourable. At this point you can add some essential oils to scent if you like, mine was vanilla scented lotion so, still nice. This can also be done with any body wash too, a nice scrub, just label and wrap in your spa set.
Many of these spa ideas can be found at a very cool site called TIPNUT, they have some really fun ideas for gifts from the kitchen. Next year we will likely make these again, they are fun and cheap, and can be personalized nicely, but I think that we will likely cut and store some of our herbs and flowers like rose petals from the garden, for use in the jars, an even cheaper and more personal gift, so nicely handmade for the holidays.
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