Chai Tea Bath Melts

 Based on a recipe from a 2008 newletter.

4oz Coco Butter

3/4 cup Baking Soda

1/2 cup Citric Acid

1 tsp Chai Tea Fragance

Cinnamon Powder (optional)

Melt the coco butter in the microwave or on the stove. Let it cool, it should be slightly warm when you put your pinky finger in. Add the baking soda, citric acid, fragrance and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder. Press in to small ice cube trays or chocolate molds and place in the fridge. Once hard remove from molds and sprinkle a little cinnamon powder on top.

Place one bath melt in a nice warm bath and let it dissolve. The citric acid and baking soda will help to dispurse the coco butter. Be careful, the tub may be a little slippery when you get out- but your skin will be soft  After you drain the water, take a towel and give the tub a wipe. Any soapy residue will come right off and your tub will really shine.

Linked to Kristens Blog Party

Melt & Pour with Salt

Melt & Pour soap with Course Sea Salt - from a 2008 newsletter


This recipe fills a 12 inch drawer organizer. We were going for colourful soap but all within the same colour range. You could use contrasting colours if you wish. This is also a good way to use up bits of leftover soap.

• ½ lb clear glycerin soap

• ¾ lb coloured glycerin soap cut into small squares

• ¾ lb coloured glycerin soap in a slightly different colour than your soap chunks.

• ½ cup of coarse sea salt

• Cosmetic Grade Glitter (optional)

• 2 tsp Fragrance (we used White Tea)

Rubbing Alcohol in a fine mist sprayer

Melt the clear soap, add 1 tsp of fragrance and pour into the drawer organizer. Let this thicken up and get a fairly firm skin on top. While this is happening you can melt the coloured glycerin soap (not the cubed soap), adding another tsp of fragrance once its melted. When the clear soap is set up enough, spray it with the rubbing alcohol and toss in the cubed soap. You can poke some of it through the thick skin of the soap if you wish. As we were putting in the cubed soap, we were sprinking it with course sea salt and some of the cosmetic glitter. Spray generously with more rubbing alcohol. Now add ½ of your melted coloured soap. Again, have a little patience and let this sit and get a thick skin, strong enough to hold some more salt. When this has happened, spray again and sprinkle some more salt and glitter on the soap and then finish filling the mold with the rest of the soap. We added a little more salt and glitter into our final pour and then waited to see what we would get once everything had hardened.

Voila! Here is our soap. The first thing we did was cut a piece each for ourselves to try. Smells good, lathers great, nice and creamy – not quite as exfoliating as the fine salt soap, but it looks neat and was super easy to make. Try it yourself!

Edit: The drawer organizer referred to is a Rubbermaid brand 12 inch long organizer. The total weight of the soap is 2lbs which gives about 10 bars of soap.

New Cards

Its that time of year where I will be needing a lot of Thankyou cards at the store. Activities and preschool are starting to end now and then it will be regular school year end and grad.

The stamps and dies used on these cards are from Papertrey Ink.

This card also used Papertrey on a premade card base from Michaels.

I gave some of these cards to my Mom with a couple of packaged tea bags that she could include when she gave someone a card. She likes to give little cards and gifties to her friends. I left the Thankyou off one of the cards so she could give it to someone who just needed a little cheering up and a nice cheery cup of tea.  Thanks for looking.

Happy Easter

Another great idea from Pinterest, these cone shaped cello bags filled with goldfish crackers make a fun sugar free treat. Lime green ribbon would have more of a carrot top colour but these were very last minute. Hope everyone has a great Easter with their families!

Vase in a Vase

Thought I would try my hand at the vase within a vase trend that you see a lot on Pinterest. I don't think any of the inner vase is supposed to show (mine does). I should have bought more jelly beans and filled it up all the way.

 

I did save some jelly beans to add to my candle jar below. Under the jelly beans are some faded split peas, they used to be green, from Christmas.

 Below are a couple of shots of everything together on a table in the entryway.

Linked to Kristen's blog party at Kristens Creations