She patted me gently on the cheek and kissed the end of my nose twice before I woke up properly. Every morning she wakes me up this way. It is 4 am on Friday and the square is reverberating with all corners of the world sipping cans of red shame (Estrella beer) while talking the bite out of the night, that turned into the following morning. After rubbernecking from my balcony for a short while I decided to make reduced-waste bath salts.
Which follows nicely from my earlier blog '5 alternatives to singular-use plastic products'. One thing I love about making scented bath salts, is the natural bouquet that lingers in the kitchen afterwards. I think English lavender works best for this product because the buds are in abundance on each stem, however any species of lavender works. Hopefully, you will already have the below-listed items in your larder:
2 cups of Epsom salt
Half a cup of sodium bicarbonate
Half a cup of rock salt
15 drops of essential lavender oil (or any scent of your preference)
Small bunch of dried English lavender (if you do not have lavender, opt for rose petals)
Small glass mason jar
This is a really cool, sweet-smelling last-minute reduced-waste gift idea which takes literally 3-4 minutes to make.
Step 1: Start by de-budding the dried lavender until the stems are completely stripped bare.
Step 2: If you have a cat who woke you up at 4 am, at this point she/he will be going absolutely berserk chasing one of the fallen lavender stems! While her obsession continues and your finger-tips have turned purple pour the 2 cups of Epsom salt into a big bowl.
Step 3: Now pour the sodium of bicarbonate, grated rock salt and 15 pipette drops of essential oil into the bowl, smoothing out any lumps with the back of a spoon.
Step 4: At which point my cat is still infatuated with her bare lavender stem so after quietly encouraging 4 am play, the last step is to pour in the lavender and mix it up (I failed to take a mixing photo, but I am sure you get my drift!). Now have a good sniff of the mixture which is fabulous, before you pour it into the mason jar (any jar with a lid works), then tie a nice reusable tag to the top of the jar and voila. One sweet-smelling reduced-waste re-useable jar of bath salts.
All I need now is a bath!
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