Wally and I finished up the bath and body items we started a few days ago. We were done before I realized the camera was still on the shelf…

But. We made bath salts (very easy, just stir together), Healing Salve, and Lotion Bars. The lotion bars were made with cocoa butter and they smell n-i-c-e. I’ve never made salve (just like lip balm, really) or lotion before, though I’ve wanted for a long time, and I was surprised at how easy it was! Just melt the ingredients together and pour into containers!

The toughest part of balms and lotions seems to be finding the right mix of ingredients to suit your own personal tastes. There are lots of website out there to help, though! My two favorites are Majestic Mountain Sage (where I purchased all my supplies) and Prairieland Herbs. I also remember browsing the Not Martha site, which then led me to see what Martha herself had to say on the subject.

So now we’re done with Phase II of making Christmas presents. I even finished up the (french seamed) gift bags that I’m going to put these little goodies in during Wally’s nap today.

So….I spent $70 on supplies (yike), including containers but not including things like honey and oatmeal that I already had in my cupboard. I used only a small portion of the ingredients I bought, intending to keep experimenting and making these well past Christmas. Plus I’m hoping that the recipients will return their empty containers when they’re done, so So…let’s say that 2/3 of that amount was for Christmas, which is still pretty generous, I think. So $46. I’m making gifts for 7 women, so that comes to $6.60 per person.

Add in the fabric for the gift bags: I bought it for $1.50 a yard, used 1 yard: $.21 per person. Add in some incidental expense for the labels (I already owned the label paper, but will undoubtedly need to replace it in the future). Those are $30 for a box of 100, $.30 each. I used 6 sheets, $1.80, so $.26 per person.

Total for all the women in the family: $7.07 each. Not bad.