Teacher Gifts - 2/10 - The Idea Room

Homemade Bath Salts and doTerra Giveaway

I am so excited to share with you a fun gift idea AND an awesome giveaway today. I LOVE homemade gifts that are functional AND pretty at the same time. I like to give things that I would actually like to receive as a gift myself…like this Homemade Bath Salts Gift Set.

The Bath Salts are really easy to make and just take a few simple, easy to find ingredients. And, if you like to take baths, you know how yummy smelling they can make your bath water. Plus the salts have some great healing and soothing aspects for your skin.

These Homemade Bath Salts also contain some awesome doTerra Essential Oils. These essential oils also have multiple benefits and uses depending on the type of Essential Oil you use.

First, let’s give you the recipe. It is the same Homemade Bath Salts Recipe I have shared with you when I first started blogging.

Homemade Bath Salts Recipe:

3 cups Epsom Salt
2 cups Baking Soda
1 cup Table Salt
Food or soap coloring (optional)
Scented Essential Oils (2-4 drops)

If you want more than one scent and color, separate into different bowls before adding the color and scent. Then you can have 2-3 different choices to choose from. Let the bath salts dry for 24 hours before placing them into your decorative jars.

I chose not to use any coloring as I wanted all of the jars to be similar and fresh and clean looking. I used doTerra’s Lemon, Lavendar, and Peppermint Essential Oils for my jars. You follow the directions for each flavor of Bath Salt and then just add the Essential Oil of your choice.

I haven’t talked much about doTerra’s Essential Oils but I have been using them since April and have fallen in love with them. You might have noticed that I have used them in a few of my past posts recently. (Chocolate Cinnamon Bread, Peppermint Candy Cane Scrub, Lemon Sugar Scrub) The thing I love about them is that almost all of doTerra’s essential oils are food-grade oils which means you can take them internally and use them safely on your skin.

I have been getting my oils from Julie Crowell, an Independent doTerra Consultant who and a fellow fan of The Idea Room. (I knew there was a reason I liked her ;)!! She is currently an Idea Room Sponsor and wants to give One Lucky Idea Room Reader…

an Introductory Set of 3 doTerra Essential Oils

(Lemon, Lavendar, and Peppermint).

If you have questions about each of the oils, you can click on their names for more information about the benefits of each oil by clicking on each of their names above. Julie has also offered to talk to any of you if you have specific questions on her FB page or by sending her an email ([email protected]).

To enter, simply follow the directions in the Rafflecopter box below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Want to print out the labels I used here? Simply click on this link to get access to the Free Bath Salts Labels.

And since many of you will ask, the bottles are Starbucks Vanilla Frappacino Drinks. They came with the cute little carrier in a set of 4. And I found them at my local Target. I know…we LOVE Target!

*This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Julie Crowell, who is an Independent Consultant for doTerra’s Essential Oils. I was given some essential oils to review. However, the opinions and text are all mine. Contest runs December 14-18, 2012. A random winner will be selected and will be given 48 hours to claim their prize before a new winner is chosen.

December 14, 2012 · Filed under: Crafts, Gifts, Giveaways, Mother's Day, Teacher Gifts Tagged with bath salt recipe, bath salts, doTerra Essential oils, essential oils, homemade bath salts, how to make bath salts

Teacher gift idea

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Nothing like a last second project…*ahem*!! I was hoping to get around to our teacher gifts EARLIER, but such is life sometimes. I whipped these up the night before the last day of school! But they did get done. I was hoping to get them earlier so I could share them with you all in case some of you might want to make some homemade teacher gifts.

Hopefully some of you still have kids with a few days of school left. Or you can always use this later for the next school year.

I have made several versions of these and my kids teachers always seem really appreciative to receive them. Apparently they go through a lot of hand sanitizer in the schools.

I usually send mine along with a gift card to the movies or a restaurant.

These are so easy to make and literally took me less than an hour to put all together. Best part? The Hand Sanitizer is a super inexpensive bottle from the dollar store.

Here is how to make them:

1. Buy Hand Sanitizer in clear bottles. Or buy empty containers (Container Store is a great source) and fill with Hand Sanitizer from a big refill bottle.

2. Remove store labels if needed. Goo Gone works great for me to remove any leftover glue residue.

3. Print the downloadable Teacher Hand Sanitizer PDF onto some clear Transparency Film. **You will need to use a laser printer or copier otherwise the ink will fall off and run in the sanitizer. A copy center can print it for you for a small charge and has transparency paper.

4. Cut out the insert. Roll it backwards and insert it into the top of the bottle.

5. Use the stem of the pump to push the label into place in the front inside of the bottle. The Hand Sanitizer will keep it sitting in the correct position.

6. Attach a hand written note from your child and/or your favorite gift card.

You can download the Teacher Hand Sanitizer PDF here:

So happy to have this be the LAST “homework” assignment/project of the school year!! Bring on SUMMER!!

Here are some of my older versions of this gift idea for those who may be interested:

Monogrammed Hand Sanitizer

Hand In Hand Sanitizer

Christmas Hand Sanitizer

Thanksgiving Hand Sanitizer

June 1, 2012 · Filed under: Back To School, Free Downloads, Teacher Gifts, Tutorials Tagged with easy teacher gifts, inexpensive gifts, practical teacher gifts, teacher gift, Teacher gift ideas, teacher gifts

block puzzle

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Hey guys…things are still crazy around here. We are finally starting to get things put back together in our home. Yeah! But we still have a LOT of work ahead of us. I hope to share an update later in the week if you are interested. But, in the meantime, I wanted to share with you a fun idea for making a fun Photo Block Puzzle.

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These have been around for a while but I was reminded of them when my mom made one of these with a group of her church friends. Hers was much larger and the blocks are about 3 inches (I think) each. I thought it would be fun to make one on a much smaller scale and make one of them for my kids or to give as a gift to someone.

So I found some 1 inch craft blocks at my local craft store. They came in a large package of several of them for just a couple of dollars.

Then I found a box that measured 2 inches x 3 inches. So that six 1 inch blocks fit almost perfectly into the box.

Then I found 6 pictures that I wanted to include on my block puzzle. One photo for each side of the block. So you have essentially 6 different photo puzzles. I loaded the photos into my photo program and cropped them so that they measured 2 x 3 inches each.

I tried to make sure that the lines I would be cutting on would not cut through any important details of the picture. This will help it so that the final picture will not be distorted. Then I glued the pieces on the puzzle with Matte finish Mod Podge.

Then I simply rotated the blocks all in the same direction and then added another photo. I continued that process and tried to make it so that the photos were on the same plane…if that makes sense. Either way it will work out.

When you are finished, every block will have one piece of each puzzle on it. And you literally have six fun photo puzzles to play with in a nice little box.

These would be a great activity for your little ones in church with faces of the people they love. Or a fun way to ask someone to a dance…do they still do that in high school? Or to give to someone as a small gift idea. There are so many fun ways these could be used.