Thursday, December 8, 2011

Homemade Christmas: Lemon Rosemary Bath Salts

It is almost Christmas. Unbelievable, but so true.
This year I decided to make my Christmas as homemade as possible.
Because I love crafting and doing lots of crafts as decorations and presents
make my day uhmm December. So I try to share one idea for a homemade Christmas with you
as often as possible and hope that you feel inspired, amused or simply festive.
Happy Christmas time to all of you!

Today, I finally want to show you another of my homemade Christmas craft projects.
It all started, when I was looking for little Christmas presents for the ladies at child care. They are notoriously underpaid, yet they are incredible motivated, lovely and enthusiastic about their job. And therefore I really wanted to show them, how much I appreciate what they do to keep my little one (and all the other little kiddos) happy every day.

Something homemade I had in mind. And something they would really enjoy. Something for themselves. And not just another child’s painting. My mum is a paediatrician and therefore I know that you can keep just so many pieces of art and that you can only enjoy that many child-made cookies every Christmas ;-)
Somehow the idea of a relaxing bath ticked all the boxes and therefore I started to do some research on home-made bath salts. There are a lot of lovely recipes online, e.g. at Martha or ehow. After a bit of searching and a little research on the effects of different plants and fruits, I decided to do a lemon rosemary bath salt, because rosemary is said to be particularly relaxing and lemon helps against stress. Plus I found the fragrance combination simply delicious.

I tweaked the recipes which I found online a bit and came up with this recipe:

Lemon-Rosemary Bath Salt
8 tablespoons of basic oil (olive, rapeseed oil etc.)
1-2 tablespoons of rosemary essential oil (depending on the desired intensity)
Lemon zest of 4 lemons
A few dried rosemary leaves
6 packs of baking powder (about 15g each)
2,5 kg coarse sea salt
Mix basic oil with rosemary oil and lemon zest in a non-metallic bowl, add coarse sea salt and baking powder and mix thoroughly with a wooden or plastic spoon. Sprinkle a few dried rosemary leaves for the visual effect. Fill into resealable glass containers. Voila!

This mixture is enough for six jars of bath salt – yes, I am sure you will need that many: your cleaning lady, the ladies at school or daycare, the nice postman,... they all need a bit of recognition and relaxation during the Christmas holidays – plus don’t forget to keep one jar for yourself. You deserve it too ;-)
It is actually quite nice to have coarse sea salt in different sizes. I bought different packs from different brands, because I haven’t bought enough in the first place, but when I stirred them together, I liked the differences of the salt in shape, size and colour very much.

I tied a little wooden spoon to the glass preserving jars for a little touch of spa, a little red band for the Christmas feel, a sticker describing the content and most importantly a little Christmas cards with a big written thank you.

And since I didn't had enough preserving jars I also filled two big sugar sprinkler. Looks quite good, too, doesn't it?

 Quick and easy, not expensive, but pretty impressive, ne?

Happy soaking!

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