Summer time is wonderful but it now has a price. With the arrival of summer comes the end of the school year. Still not a bad thing till it’s two days before the last day of school and you realize that you forgot to get the teacher’s and daycare providers a thank you gift for putting up with your kiddos all year. Oh the horror!!!
First of all when my oldest started school, I asked one of the daycare providers what kind of gifts they appreciated. She informed me that they get really sick and tired of chocolate and such. Well. That really limits my quick fix gift ideas. As such, I have spent the last three years trying to be creative and not buy chocolate or make cookies for Christmas and end of your thank you gifts. I have bought coffee mugs and put coffee shop gift cards in them, coffee mugs with actual coffee and biscotti in it and the first year our child was at school, before asking what teacher’s wanted, we made chocolate snowflakes in cookie cutters that the recipient got to keep.
This year however, in order to not be stuck last minute (which I was), I started trolling Pinterest for teacher gift ideas roughly two months ago. Wow. Lot’s of cute little things that seem kind of useless. Oh and my kids go to French school, so all the cute little presents with matching cute taglines didn’t work. I always try to give something that they will use AND like. This seems to be rather laudable aspirations! In the end, I was inspired by the organic body scrub I made and gave as thank you gifts at a baby shower I gave in May. This time, I made bath salts.
Bath salts, as it turns out, are rather easy to make but they have a learning curve. The methodology took me at least 3 tries to get right but I got it! So without further ado, here they are!
Ingredients:
- 6 cups Epsom salts
- 1 tbsp baking soda
- 18 dropsred food dye
- 9 drops blue food dye
- 3 drops lavender essential oil
- 3 drops lemon essential oil
Other items needed:
- Mason jars to put bath salts into
- Small spoon or scoop
- Twine
- Labels
- Scissors
This recipe makes 6 cups of bath salts. I used 500 ml mason jars so I had to double the recipe to get the amount I needed.
Pour Epsom salt into glass 8 cup measuring cup, or large glass bowl. Stir in baking soda.
In a separate glass bowl, combine lavender and lemon essential oils with the red and blue food dye. Stir until completely mixed. Color should change to a dark purple. Take 1/2 cup of epsom salt mix add to essential oil mixture and stir until all the salt has been dyed purple and the clumps have been broken down. Add more salt as needed.
Pour the purple epsom salt into the large bowl and gently stir until completely blended. Don’t forget to check the bottom of bowl for unmixed epsom salt and keep stirring until completely well blended and all uniformly purple.
Using a canning funnel (larger mouth), pour the lavender lemon bath salts into mason the jars. Close the lids and add the label that details the ingredients. Use the twine to tie the spoon to the jar and voila! Your gift is ready. This doesn’t really take a lot of time. Maybe a half-hour total.
Note: this can easily be made without the dye. Simply do not add the red and blue dye in with the essential oil. Continue to follow the same steps otherwise.
In the end, I think this was the most popular gift we have given to date. The teachers and daycare providers LOVED it! When I picked up the kids at the end of the day, they made sure to find me and thank me and gush about the bath salts… Totally a first!
I hope you enjoy this recipe. I know that I know have a huge mason jar (1L) of scented bath salts in my bathroom and love soaking in them!
Fluffy girl & food 