Lily is soooo excited for her gifts. She didn't think much about what to give for Christmas, until we were scoping out our local craft store (Michael's), when I pointed out the soap isle. Oh my gosh, you could see the light bulb go on! Her eyes lit up and she bolted towards the isle.
This is what she wanted to give. Here's what we bought...
two kinds of soap blocks...
some oil fragrances and color dyes...
several molds (now you can use candy molds as well!)...
and we bought small saucers from Daiso, a 100 yen Japanese market (LOVE that place).
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Once we had all the stuff, it was time to craft!
Lily was a soap making freak! Almost everyday when she came home from school, she would want to make a batch of soaps. It is SUPER easy to make! Literally just melt the soap in the microwave, add fragrance and color, pour into your mold, place in the refrigerator for half an hour and WALLAH! You got yourself a cute custom made soap!
Lily pretty much did it all by herself (with our supervision of course!). Now how are we going to package these? Hmmm... we thought of boxes, but that can get costly... we thought of gift bags, but again we would have to buy them and I certainly don't have the time to make any...
think-think-think...
AH-HA! Mike came up with the idea of putting the soap in its dish, resting on a nest of shredded newspapers (which, BTW is the newspaper that the dishes were wrapped in from the store), put it inside a sandwich bag and staple a folded piece of paper with a message on it, onto the outside of the bag... BRILLIANT!
And so it came out, looking like this. Pretty cool, huh?! She wants to make one for each family member... now if you know my family, there's quite a few of us! According to my list, she would need to make (and this is a rough count, mind you) roughly about 25. She's halfway there!
A while back while checking out a few of my favorite blogs, Little Bit Funky made sugar scrubs as gifts. I was sooo excited! Man, I tell ya... this lady has so many brilliant ideas and such cute stuff, it kills me! So I showed Lily and she flipped. She wanted to make them as well AND she wanted to make them WITH the soaps for EVERY family member!!! YIKES!
"Uh... let's just give one. That way you'll have enough for them and have some left over give to your friends and teachers!" I said.
"Okay!" She replied.
So, Crystal... thank you so-so much for sharing your recipe for the sugar scrubs! I actually tried it and I love it so much that I requested Lily to make me one for Christmas.
Get the recipe HERE!
When Lily made the first batch, Lily said it looks like applesauce and wanted to taste it. "Ewww!", I told her. Just to be safe, Lily wrote instructions and I printed it out to put with every jar.
Okay, so don't be alarmed by the color of the sugar scrub. We ran out of regular granulated sugar and all I had left was this natural sugar cane sugar from Mexico. It's actually quite yummy sugar.
I think Lily has the coolest handmade gifts... dang it! Too cute!
Sophie's gifts are really cool... that I'll share with you another day (hee-hee)!
Oh shoot... for any family members out there... you didn't see this!!!
Those are adorable and that little girl is so precious!! What a great way to start her out on the path to handmade gift giving! :) Love how you presented them all! Thanks for the kind words as well. :)
Posted by: Crystal | December 17, 2009 at 10:52 AM
super cute! it warms my heart to see how you are teaching your children the value of handmade. what wonderful gifts and fabulous memories!!!
Posted by: summer | December 17, 2009 at 05:01 PM