Or so she says...

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1
Feb

Recipes for a Blissful Bath! ~ Great Valentine’s Day Gift ~

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/ in Gifts for Women, Makeup, Hair & Skin Care, Mother's Day/ tags , , , 4 Comments

It’s very rare that I slip into a bath…by the time I get the kids in bed, all I want to do is crash.  But, I should do it more, I love baths.  Baths in the dark, yum.  Relaxing.  I actually feel relaxed just thinking about it!  Since you love when I divulge personal information, I’ll have you know that I can’t put anything extra in my baths…unless, I want a serious bladder infection.  Oh, but how I want to!  I would love to soak up some a corner bathtub in England with luscious oils and smell of rose petals, but no.  I would be squealing in horrible discomfort and doing the pee-pee dance for hours afterward…until I got my antibiotics.  Not worth it.  I guess I’ll just smell like water instead.  But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t smell like heaven and feel softer than a bunny….so, here are some easy recipes that you can make yourself!  Better yet, bottle them for yourself AND for gifts!
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Relaxing Pink
(Pink has proven to be a relaxing color…so, it makes perfect sense to add it to your bath!)
1 cup witch hazel
3-5 hibiscus tea bags
2 cups kosher salt
Blend witch hazel with 1 cup hot water. Place the tea bags in the solution and brew for at least 20 minutes…creating pink water. Add a few spoonfuls of the colored liquid to the sald and blend until the color is evenly distributed. Pour the pink salt under the streaming water of your bath.
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Mint Bath Bombs 
(refreshes the skin and senses)
1 cup baking soda
1 cup citric acid (find at health food stores)
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup light oil (canola, sunflower, or almond)
2 – 4 TBS chopped mint (can get from mint tea bags)
2 muffin tins or ice cube trays
Stir all ingredients until they form a crumbly dough. Pack the mixture into the tins. Let the bath bombs set overnight. Tap the bottom of the tray to remove bombs; let air dry. Use anytime by plopping one or two into a tub of warm water; store the rest in a resealable plastic bag; they’ll keep indefinitely.For another Bath Bomb Recipe and picture tutorial, click here.
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Oatmeal Cookie Bath
1 cup rolled oats (exfoliates)
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 TBS. vanilla extract
Blend ingredients in a blender until smooth, similar to flour. Pour under water and relax! Bath Salts 
(Can be made into any scent you choose!)Heaping 1/4 cup Epsom salt
Heaping 1/8 cup sea salt
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. liquid glycerin
Essential Oil (your choice of scent), about 4 drops (more or less…your choice, again :))
Food Coloring to desired color (1-2 drops?)Mix all together and bottle.  Easy!
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Hand & Foot ScrubHeaping 1/3 cup fine white sugar
Heaping 1/8 cup sea salt
1/8 cup mineral oil
Essential oil drops to desired smell (about 4)
Food coloring to desired color (1-2)

Mix all together, bottle.  To use, put a bit of scrub on hands and feet and add a little water.  Rub, rinse, dry, and lotion.

I’ve made the last couple recipes several times and bottled them for gifts.  Once you have the ingredients, it literally takes just minutes to whip up!  You can find corked bottles and jars of all different sizes and shapes for under a dollar, I got mine at Sunburst Bottles.

You can jazz up your bottles and containers with ribbons, labels, and other embellishments.  Autumn Leah Designs makes tons and tons of darling labels!

You can also download and make your own labels with Martha Stewarts help…see here.

More homemade beauty products:

“Green Your Beauty Routine” Homemade Beauty Products
Homemade Foot Soak
Homemade Hair Treatment
The Asprin Mask TreatmentHomemade Deodorant and Face Scrub

Have so much fun!

For gift ideas for everyone on your list, check out the Gift Ideas tab and be sure to pin Gift Idea Central, to keep the whole collection in one place.

 

Mariel

Mariel

Owner & Author at Or so she says...
Mariel (mahr-eeee-elle) is a mother to seven, wife to one. Loves homeschooling, golfing, cupcakes, traveling, cuddling, non-fiction books, gardening, James Taylor, and family time. This is her blog. Enjoy!
Mariel

@orsoshesays

Mariel
  
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Comments

  2. Great recipes! I can’t wait to try them….and give some away.

    You wanna hear a depressing story? We bought a house in December and it has a GINORMOUS jacuzzi tub. (Okay so that’s the depressing part for all of you, he he). The sad thing is, I can’t take a bath, cause I sustained an injury in May ’09 and after surgery and stuff, I STILL have a wound on my leg that hasn’t healed and that can’t soak in a bath. So I have yet to enjoy the luxury that is my OWN bathtub. So sad. So depressing. I’m so weird for sharing this, but I SO wanna bath right now and your post made me excited and sad at the same time. Boo Hoo 🙁 Thanks a lot!

    But it was a great post nonetheless. (is that all one word?…somehow it looks wrong….too bad they don’t have spell checker on comments. It would save me a lot of embarrassment….kinda like talking to yourself…..or typing to yourself, in this case) Ummmm….okay bye!

    Reply

  3. LOL, just be careful with the bath bombs! If you add even the slightest bit too much water they turn into marshmallows. I make these to sell, together with our soaps, lip balms, and other stuff, and my first foray into bath bomb-making (or as we’re calling them, “fizzy bath bars”) was something of a disaster. I didn’t have a lot of citric acid at the time, so losing the ingredients was SUCH a waste! 🙁 If you want to read about it, you can check my Reef Botanicals blog, it’s listed in my profile. You can read about it in my January 21 post, and then see the subsequent SUCCESSFUL results in the January 24 post.

    Also, be careful not to use too much in the way of food coloring; it stains like the dickens. We don’t use any in our stuff because of that and because we only use natural ingredients.

    Reply

  4. please send that pictured bathtub my way. please refer to my email a few weeks ago regarding my bathing dilemma, sigh… someday. PS totally been there more than I’d like with the UTI experience, so not worth it. better to smell like water and then moisturize with some yummy lotion.

    Reply

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