Christmas Gifts: Homemade Sugar Scrub

Thank you for all your comments on my last post, particularly the Christmas rant. I feel I should qualify it a little by saying that I do absolutely love Christmas. I made a felt gingerbread house last year, for heavens sake. What sane person does that if they don't like Christmas? I enjoy choosing gifts and I revel in the festive build up - sending and receiving cards, the advent calender, all of it, and I love the big day. It's the countdowns that irk me, the way they panic people into buying, and over buying too. 

I don't think making your owns gifts is superior to buying them; I have chosen to make gifts this year as, for many reasons, we have more time than money at the moment. I'm sure next year will be totally different and there might (hopefully) be more money but a lot less time and I'll be Christmas shopping in earnest. My need to budget and organise is also partly because we have five close family birthdays in December: my mother in law's falls on the 9th, Bella's on the 18th, my sister Anna's is on the 23rd and my sister Katy and her son, my nephew, celebrate their birthdays on the 27th of December. It's joyfully hectic but must be planned carefully! You can't leave all that until the last minute.

So, whatever your thoughts on Christmas, here is a little something that I made this week which is ridiculously easy and very cheap, and takes all of twenty minutes and looks more than the sum of it's parts. If you google "sugar scrub recipes" you will find hundreds of different combinations with different sugars, oils and scents or flavours. Essentially, you need sugar, some oil to bind it together, and something to fragrance it with. Some recipes suggest two parts sugar to one part oil, some much more. I ended up using a lot more sugar and a lot less oil - I just kept playing around with it until I was happy. I found that too much oil in the mixture left too much oil on the skin after use and I wanted my skin to feel moisturised, not greasy. I used:

 2 x 500 ml airtight jars from Ikea, excellent value at only 80p each.

1 kg granulated white sugar

100 ml coconut oil

100 ml olive oil

essential oil - a few drops

Mix the sugar and oils together in a bowl until you have something that resembles damp sand.

Add the fragrance a few drops at a time, until you're happy with the amount and mix well. I chose bergamot oil. Essential oils are very strong and you wont need much - maybe ten drops in each 500 ml jar. Pour into your clean and ready jars.

Pat the mixture down with the back of a spoon, pushing it all the way down to the bottom and seal the jars.

Now the fun bit - play with ribbons, washi tape and labels. If you're like me, bemoan your horrible, scrawly handwriting. 

Admire the pleasing colours.

It will be packaged up prettily with the wash cloths and some other bits and bobs. 

And best of all, there was enough left over for a small jar for me.