Homemade Christmas Presents

I like to try to make gifts to give whenever possible. It just feels a little more special to have made something for someone. Is is just me?

Tomorrow is our last day of co-op so I needed to come up with something to make for my children's teachers. I thought about baking something but this is such a rough time of year for trying to keep weight off that I didn't want my gift to end up being a curse rather than a blessing! So I had to come up with something else.

I had bought some cute bags and little wooden scoops from Pick Your Plum. I had pinned several receipes for a salt or sugar scrub but these are all made with oil and I didn't think my little bags would hold up. I wanted something dry, so I hopped on Pinterest and searched for bath salts. I found several different recipes but I based mine on was this one. I made up my own version, however. Here are the ingredients I used:

2 cups epsom salts
1 cup baking soda
lavendar flowers
chamomile tea mix

I mixed the salts with the soda and added a small jar (think McCormick's) of lavendar flowers that I had bought years ago for a project Annie wanted to do but never did. They smell so good! Gave that a good mix. That filled two bags but I needed to make more and didn't have enough of the flowers so I had to come up with something else.

I had seen a recipe for a tea soak and thought about adding some black Chinese tea leaves I had. But then I ran across a jar I had of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea. It's my favorite tea! Tastes great and smells wonderful as well! At my husband's work they have a Keurig with an assortment of teas. No one was drinking the Sleepytime (who wants to be sleepy at work, right?) so my husband brought the K cups home to me. I had opened them up and poured them into a jar (we don't have a Keurig) and was planning on using it as loose tea. However, I sacrificed my tastebuds and added it to my second batch. I just added the Sleepytime tea to the salts/soda mixture and gave it a good stir.

Then I bagged them up in the little bags with a peek-a-boo window, tied on a little wooden scoop (also from Pick Your Plum) with green and red ribbon (that I had bought on clearance last Christmas at JoAnn's). I'm so happy with the way they turned out!

Cute, festive, useful and calorie-free! Merry Christmas teachers! I appreciate what you do for my children!

Herb Garden

I have a separate herb garden that is closer to my back door so I can pop out and snip the required herb. All I had left after the winter was my ever-increasing thyme patch and some parsley that had self-seeded.

I bought basil, oregano, marjoram, peppermint, spearmint, sage, and lamb's ear (accidentally, I thought it was sage!) I also planted parsley and basil seed that I had collected but nothing's come up yet. Here you can see all the new plants I added. You can see the largish parsley bush in the background and the big thyme patch in the foreground.