Homemade Gifts

Well, we found the keys, but dh forgot to put them back on yet. I did cool down, but yesterday was a strong willed child day let me tell you.

Anyways, I was going to post this yesterday too, but some other things happened. Such as, my oldest, Leiah, busted her teeth Sunday morning. Her two front teeth were a little loose, but they are way messed up now. So I had to talk to some pediatric dentists and we are praying that the teeth will reset and not need to be pulled. For now we are giving tylenol for swelling and keeping her on soft foods. Poor thing!

Yesterday I did some research on gift making. Yeah I know, I probably should have done that way before now, but oh well. I found some fun ideas!

One thing are called gifts in a jar. If you're not familiar with that term, basically it's food items you layer in a glass mason jar, then decorate. For instance, for one person I will layer all different kinds of beans and seasonings, then include a recipe for bean soup. I'll also make a cornbread mix and set them in a basket with some wooden spoons or something.
For another persons, a pancake mix, a coffee drink mix and maybe a whisk would be cute 'breakfast' themed basket.
I would list some links, but it's really easy to just google 'gifts in a jar' and lots of websites come up and most are good.

Another idea I had was homemade bath products. I used to make soap from lye and melt and pour soup when I first married. I still have some dried herbs and essential oils, so I could just buy a brick of melt and pour soap for $10 and a mold and maybe some nice oil like sweet almond or apricot kernel and make some soap.

But, did you know that you can make lots of things with just ingredients from the grocery store?
You can make bath bombs with baking soda and epsom salt, bath salts with rock salt and some oil. Here is one of the recipes:

Lavender Bath Salts

------------------------

1 c. rock salt or sea salt

(You can find sea salt at your

local grocery store)

1/2 c. Epsom salt

2 T. baking soda

10 drops lavender oil

colorant

Blend all except baking soda. Blend soda after other ingredients are mixed. You can also add 1/2 tsp. of glycerin at this point to make the salts sparkle. Use 1/4 c. to 1/2 c. Per bath.

Can't get much simpler than that! One of the sites I found was here, and the other here. There are lots more, but these are the only ones I bookmarked for some reason. You can put these in glass mason jars too, or old clear shampoo bottles etc. Add some ribbon and maybe a silk flower. For the soaps I have dried rose petals and lavender flowers and I have lavender, peppermint and tangerine essential oils. I might could get an orange oil and a rose one to add to it. I also really like rosemary an mint together- may try that. Essential oils range from $3-5 at our health food store and last a long time.

I saw another idea and CANNOT find the website! But it was simmering potpourri packaged in glass jars. You would put sliced lemons, oranges, cloves, cinnamon sticks, allspice berries etc. in a glass jar, cover with distilled water, and then it could be simmered on the stove top and refrigerated for later use. It was really pretty, and very inexpensive :) The picture was really pretty- but I can't find it :(