I don’t usually post about work, because this blog is supposed to about my spare time, and honestly it’s also about how I handle stress. Work causes me some stress, and when I’m stressed I cook, garden, clean, or scream. Usually, if I do one or more of the first three, I never make it to the last one.  However, my business is a part of who I am, and most of the time it’s all good.

If you’ve never run across what I do for a living while reading this blog, I own a small company that supplies raw materials for making soaps, lotions, and any number of other handmade personal care products.  It’s a completely separate body of knowledge which I should probably try to share from time to time.

Today I’m going to shamelessly plug my business, The Original Soap Dish, and show you how to throw together a really super quick and easy bath product.  It’s a great project for kids and beginners. This is the type of project I’d help my boys do when they were in elementary school, and suddenly decided they wanted to give gifts to teachers for Christmas.

Bath and body products are usually formulated by weight, but for the sake of kids and newbies, I’m going to give  common volumetric kitchen measurements.  Also, each of the ingredients is linked to my website where the ingredients are available.  If you have access to the things you need locally, that’s great!

Lavender Coconut Milk Bath
Before getting started, gather a few common kitchen items:

Bowl
Whisk
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons

You will also need the following items:

2 cups coconut milk powder
1/2 cup lavender flower buds
2 Tablespoons lavender fragrance or essential oil
Large heat sealable tea bags

Place coconut milk powder and lavender flowers in the bowl and whisk together until evenly mixed.

Add fragrance oil to the mixture and whisk until thoroughly incorporated.  It’s sort of like making biscuits and cutting oil or butter into flour.  You’ll know it’s done when you have an even consistency, and no clumps of the fragrance oil and powder.  Next, spoon some of the mixture into the empty tea bags.  Each bag will hold about 1/4 cup.

Once the tea bags are filled, simply seal them with a hot clothing iron.  Make sure the iron is set to a high temperature, and the steam is turned off.  The teabags won’t seal properly if the steam is on.

Once sealed, package your bath tea bags for gift giving.  Here I’ve packed a few in a cello bag and made my own labels using clear laser jet labels.  Packaging is a great creative activity in itself.  Your kids may want to get busy with brown paper bags and crayons. You could place the tea bags in decorated recycled jars. Recycle an old tea tin or Altoid tin.  Recycle cardboard tea boxes by stamping, or using some of your scrap book materials.

I know it’s nothing earth shattering, but I just had to share.  My mom dropped by my house for a visit yesterday evening bearing gifts! She and my dad just got back from 2 weeks of vacationing in Europe with my sister and her family, who live in Germany. This is a picture of my sister sitting in the middle of a lavender field in Provence, France. If you look closely you can see some beehives off in the distance to the left. I just love this picture of my little sister!

While traveling, my mom and sister picked up a couple of gifts for me.  You must understand …. everyone in my family gives me gifts in fear and trepidation. Believe it or not, I’m very difficult to choose gifts for, and my mom and sister are always worried that I’m going to hate whatever they give me.  In fact, my mom told me that if I didn’t like it she would understand! I’m one of those practical, picky people who knows exactly what she likes and dislikes.  Unfortunately, my family has never been able to figure me out, including my husband and sons. I know!  I’m a horrible person! I promise that I’m working to improve my gift accepting skills.  The problem is that I’m also a terrible liar.

Knowing how much I love all things herbal they chose this lavender syrup from Provence, and some pesto. What I love is that these are items that I make for myself, and provide and interesting basis of comparison for the quality of what I make myself.

I sampled the pesto on some whole wheat pasta for my lunch this afternoon.  I’ve got to say that my own pesto is not shabby at all. I know this little jar is the authentic stuff, but I like mine much better.  I was surprised by how salty it tasted, and it didn’t seem very basil-y.  I promise by summer’s end that I’ll provide at least one pesto recipe.

Now the lavender syrup is quite lovely! At this moment,  I’m sipping on a glass of bubbly water with lavender syrup added.  It’s sweet and lightly floral.  It’s going to take me a while to use this bottle, so I won’t be making any in the near future. There is still plenty of time this year to make lavender syrup, so if you’d like to give it a try I’m going to direct you to the blog of a friend of mine, Tina Sams, the editor of The Essential Herbal magazine.