It's the most wonderful time....
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...to realize that you're broke and have a gazillion presents to buy and everyone you know already has everything they need?
No but really. I love homemade gifts. Of course it's nice to save money, but really it's that second part up there - the people in my life aren't hard to buy for necessarily, they just have what they need and aren't terribly gimme-gimme around this time of year.
I really love giving food gifts, naturally, but this year felt like something cozier, comforting-er, and smellier. In a good way.
This was inspired by my friend Kathy who I teach yoga with - she made these last year for all the yoga instructors at our studio, and Jay and I were just obsessed. Then this year she had a sugar-scrub making PARTY which I was super bummed to miss, but she shared with me her simple recipe for sugar scrub. It's got all the good stuff - sugar for de-flaking, coconut oil for moisturizing, and any essential oil you like for smelling good. And those three ingredients are IT, which is great. 
I made two scents of the scrub for my peeps - lavender and tangerine. I also looked up a few different recipes for this and found varying measurements for the sugar to oil ratio: a lot of things had equal parts sugar and coconut oil, but I found that to be a little less scrubby than I like. So I ended up closer to 2 parts sugar to 1 part coconut oil. You just dump that in a bowl. 
Coconut oil softens FAST, but if yours is super duper hard you can microwave it for a few seconds. You can also just start to stir it into the sugar and the sugar will mash it into submission - just take your time! Then add the essential oil - start with 10 drops or so and sniff, then add more if you'd like a stronger smell. If the sugar scrub is really runny or you don't think it looks grainy enough, add some more sugar until it's a consistency that you'd like it to be. 
Then we just dump the whole thing into pretty jars and gift away! These are from Hobby Lobby, which I actually hate supporting because the CEOs are dicks, but they have cute containers so....ok. Kathy gifted her scrub in Ball jars last year and I loved that too - use whatever you like! 
These are fun, USEFUL homemade gifts, and even if you don't gift this to anyone it's nice just to make at home and have around - you probably have all these ingredients at home already, and if you don't they're of course readily available. 
Happy gifting!
Recipe
Homemade Sugar Scrub
Ingredients
- 1 cup coconut oil
- 2 cups sugar
- essential oil - any kind you like
Instructions
- Combine the coconut oil, sugar, and 10 drops essential oil in a bowl. Mash the mixture together until it's evenly mixed, then sniff - add more essential oil if you'd like a stronger smell! If you'd like a thicker paste, add more sugar. If you'd like to thin out the scrub, add a little more coconut oil.
- Store in airtight jars or containers, use for yourself, or give away as gifts!
Notes
- Play around with fragrance here - I used single fragrances for 2 batches of scrub, but you could mix two oils together and create custom blends. Yummy!
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