What does your brain need you to try?

I took on this challenge at the start of the year and didn’t quite get around to the English Paper Piecing I planned to learn for January. I just wasn’t motivated enough to make a bunch of hexies, because what will I do with hexies? And I spent most of the month in my doctor’s office anyway. She sends her regards.

This month, the theme was to try something tactile, like pottery, soap or candlemaking. I had really hoped to resurrect Patrick Swayze for one last dance around the pottery wheel, but alas! I had no clay to get dirty with and all of Montreal’s mud is frozen solid in February.

With pottery fantasies no longer being an option, I scaled back on the goal and cleaned up my act with something I had tried once before: Homemade Bath Salts.

Ingredients

The setup here is very important. Even if you forget one of the ingredients and have to run out to the store after you’ve started, that’s better than forgetting to pour yourself a glass of Moscato. See how I’ve got wine but no milk powder?

So, for approximately 4 cups (1 litre) of this yummy me-time goodness, here’s what you’ll need:

• 1.5 cups sea salt
• 1.5 cups epsom salts
• 0.5 cup powdered whole milk
• 0.5 cup baking soda
• 24 drops of essential oil (I made 3 separate batches: Lavender, Eucalyptus, and Rose)
• Food colouring (Optional, but it keeps me from opening all the jars every time I want to take a bath.)
• 1 large glass or ceramic bowl (No need to worry about food contamination because all of this stuff is ok to consume in small amounts.)
• Mixing spoon or spatula (Did I really have to tell you this, as if you were planning to mix it with your thumb?)

Step 1: Pour the Moscato and take a few sips. (Pretty obvious!)

Step 1.5: Dash to the store for the powdered milk. My store was out of whole milk and I had to buy the skim crap. At that price, I want fat in my milk!! [Insert childish tantrum here.]

Ingredients: Take 2

Step 2: Mix together the baking soda and milk powder until you run out of lumps to squash.

Step 3: Add epsom salts and mix well.

Step 4: Drink some more wine.

Step 5: This is where you get to play with colour theory. (Oops! this was supposed to be Step 2, but the disappearing Magic Moscato got me confused. Anyway, we can still make this work.) … Mix a bunch of your food colouring together until you get the nice pretty colour that lets you know at a glance which oils you put in your concoction. If you’re doing lavender scented salts, my sympathies; that shit will not come out with the right colour no matter what you do!

Step 6: Stir the dry mixture and the food colouring mixture together (makes no difference which one you did first) until the colour is more or less uniform. Do not add Moscato at this stage!

All done! Brrrrrrrr…

Step 7: Add the dili… dele… deely… yummy smelzing essential oil to your misccature and stir it, baking sherrr that you don’t splim… slip… spill any.

Step 8: Salt it! So, after the room stops spinning, put the course sea salt in and mix it up.

Step 9: Fill up the air tight jars (the ones I conveniently forgot to mention ahead of time) and label them if you skipped the food colouring.

Step 10: Go outside in -12C, wearing a tank top and house slippers to photograph your … scratch that! It’s just my curse.

That’s pretty much it. Now, I’d love to stay and chat with you a little longer but I have a hot date with a tub of veeeery hot water… and maybe another glass, but who’s counting?

PS. It’s ok if the cat drinks your bathwater. He’ll get over it after a few trips to the litter.

PPS. If the measurements are off, don’t blame me. It was the wine. But close enough is good enough.

Tags: bath salts, bathtime, experiments, homemade, Moscato, TSNEM