DIY Bath Salts with Shelley Munro

Today, we're visiting New Zealand with Shelley Munro.

When Shelley came up with this idea for bath salts I knew it was perfect. It's homemade. It's inexpensive. And it's from the heart. Your friends and family will love it.

I am definitely doing this one.

Hello everyone, and thanks to Maria for inviting me to take part in her 12 Days of Christmas celebration. I feel very honored!

Imagine relaxing in a warm bath with the waft of lavender soothing your cares away. Read on, because this could be you…

Lavender Bath Salts

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons baking soda

1 tablespoon citric acid

Sprigs of fresh lavender or dried lavender if you have it

8 drops of lavender essential oil

Method:

1. Pick a handful of lavender flowers (or borrow or steal from the neighbor). Leave a bit of the stalk on the flower. Dry the lavender flowers. I put them in a sunny place in the kitchen for 2 days. You can also put them in the oven when it’s cooling down after cooking the evening meal. The flowers should be dry and almost crunchy in texture.

2. Mix the baking soda and citric acid together in a clean, dry bowl. If the baking soda is lumpy, put it through a sieve.

3. Add the dried lavender flowers to the bowl, roughly crumbling the flowers into small pieces.

4. Add 8 drops of lavender essential oil and mix well.

5. Keep in an airtight jar and sprinkle in your bath before you jump in and relax.

Lavender Bath Bomb

1. Use the same ingredients above plus 1 teaspoon of almond oil. If you don’t have almond oil use some oil out of the pantry. Olive etc is fine. Mix well.

2. Push the mix into a mold and compact with a spoon. Allow to dry for about an hour.

3. Run a bath and add the bath bomb. Relax and enjoy!

Notes:

1. This is a good recipe for kids to help with since it teaches them about botany and chemistry and they get clean too.

2. Great for gifts. Place in airtight jar and decorate with ribbon to make it look pretty. 

3. I used poached egg molds to make my bombs. A cookie cutter would work too.

4. Make sure your work area is totally dry since the introduction of any water will make your mix fizz when it shouldn’t!

5. The recipe will make one bath bomb.

6. Here’s a link for chocolate bath salts if lavender doesn’t do it for you.

Shelley Munro lives in New Zealand with her husband and a very naughty puppy. She writes romance for Ellora’s Cave and Samhain Publishing and romantic mysteries for Carina Press. To learn more about Shelley and her books visit her website http://www.shelleymunro.com. Christmas is Coming is her latest release—a saucy little romance about sex toys and Christmas.

CONTEST: I’d like to give away an ebook download from my backlist to one reader. To enter – give me the name of one new-to-you author who you’ve read this year as well as the title of their book. I like to add to my reading pile. 

NOTE: For other DIY Christmas posts, go here. Be sure to leave a comment because there are goodies involved all throughout the blogfest. All contests for the DIY posts end 12-22-11, so you can comment on any previous post.