How to have a Happy Mother’s Day!

The Kitchen Post has lacked a lot of recipes and food related items lately – not because we haven’t been eating good food but because my pregnancy has left me with very little desire to enjoy food as much. Well, I’m prepared to share another recipe with you but I would definitely recommend that you don’t eat it, pregnant or not.

A month back I had help throw a baby shower for this amazing new mommy and instead of doing baby shower games (aren’t we all tired of those games?) we decided to do a fun project instead. Something to pamper the mom-to-be but also to pamper any woman because, let’s face it, we all like to be pampered whether we have an excuse or not. So my co-host and I happened upon Martha Stewart’s Sugar Scrubs, a natural hand/foot/body exfoliator plus moisturizer using easily obtainable ingredients. The brilliant thing about this is that you don’t need lotion after using it! This is the project that is being heard all around our little world over here – so many people are reproducing and gifting these babies and we are so excited that they were a hit!

I used grape seed oil but light olive oil is good too. The essential oils I used for these particular jars are lime, lemon, and peppermint, and I combined the lemon and lime for one. For the shower we had grapefruit, lime, peppermint, orange, and lavendar with so many combos in between: grapefruit mint, lime mint, peppermint lavendar, orange mint, orange grapefruit, etc. On my to-do list is cinnamon, clove, cinnamon clove (can label as pumpkin spice and color orange), a ginger-cinnamon-clove combo labelled as gingerbread, exotic fruit scents like passionfruit, pineapple, maybe add coconut. The peppermint can be relabelled candy cane for Christmas time. The possibilities are endless.

These were a blast! Martha only provided a few labels so I made up some more to accomodate every creative outlet we could take on this evening. Essential oils were purchased at local health food stores and our minds are still spinning with the many possibilities of scents you could create.

Decorating the jars is also a lot of fun. For the shower we use pint size mason jars that I had on hand but the cutest are the new contemporary Ball mason jars with silver lids and bands.

I’ve also made brown sugar scrubs with vanilla extract for the scent and no food coloring. Not as cute as the colored ones but I find it is not as abrasive and hey, if you want you can eat it :) I used some on my feet last night and they still feel oh so smooth and soft! Happy Mother’s Day!

Sugar Scrubs

modified from MarthaStewart.com

2 cups white (or brown) sugar
1 cup carrier oil (olive oil, grapeseed, sunflower)
8 drops essential oil(s) (vanilla extract can be used with brown sugar, the color wont look good on the white)
1 drop food coloring (or to your liking, stay on the lighter side if you don’t want to stain yourself!)
Special equipment: plastic pipette, canning jars

Directions
1. Stir together sugar and carrier oil in a bowl, mixing well.

2. Using pipette or if oil has a dropper lid, add essential oil, 1 drop at a time. Add food coloring, and stir until color is even throughout. Spoon into canning jars.

***EDIT***

3. Download my clip-art labels, enlarging or reducing to fit top of canning jar if necessary. Print onto ink-jet bumper-sticker paper (which is designed to withstand water). Cut out the labels, and affix to clean jars. Design idea from Martha Stewart.com and font used from AbstractFonts.com. I will add to this file as it doesn't include the lemon mixes and I just bought Tangerine and Black Coconut scents so I need to update again soon. If you use these with the Ball jars cut a little margin outside of the label image so that it fits the lid and the image still shows completely after putting the lid on.