For the past two years, I’ve run across the BEST ideas for Teacher Appreciation Day . . . approximately two weeks AFTER Teacher Appreciation Day. Helpful, right?

Well, this year I was determined to plan ahead and be That Mom (the responsible, caring, on-top-of-it mom who gives her child’s teachers thoughtful gifts on the appropriate holidays) and not That Mom (the one who forgets everything, from permission slips and tuition checks to snack day and Teacher Appreciation Day). Annalyn adores her teachers this year, and I truly DO appreciate them. It’s only right to show them with a little gift!

It’s possible I still forgot quite a few things this school year, but NOT this one. Teacher Appreciation Day is next Tuesday, May 7. So come Monday (because her class is M/W/F), my daughter will march into preschool with the sweetest little packages for her teachers: a bar of dark chocolate, a little tube of cocoa butter lotion, and a homemade brown sugar body scrub.

I’ve seen recipes for body scrubs on Pinterest, and I always wondered how easy it was to make them. In her ebook, Simple Scrubs to Make and Give, Stacy from A Delightful Home breaks it down and makes it easy enough for anyone – even That Mom (or this one!). She explains why and how to use body scrubs, then defines the basic ingredients (sugar or salt, base oils and essential oils) and suggests places to find them.

And then she shares recipes for more than two dozen different scrubs, like Holiday Spice Sugar Rub, Rustic Lavendar Scrub, Chocolate Lover’s Scrub and Morning Coffee Scrub. She even ends the book with ideas for packaging, making these scrubs perfect for gifts.

It really is a great book, and I’m pretty sure this will the Year of Scrubs for me.

[That’s right, real-life friends and family. A body scrub is coming to you soon, so just get ready. Or, even better, pretend like you didn’t read this at all. And then when I give you a tiny jar of homemade body scrub, exclaim, “Oh, wonderful! I was SO HOPING you’d make one for me! Thank you so much, my very favorite friend/family member/neighbor/person I’ve only met once!” Yes, that’ll do.]

One of my favorite things about Stacy’s book is the way she defines “simple” at the very beginning. She explains that she calls these products “simple scrubs” because they’re simple to make and made from simple ingredients. I’d agree with that definition. Here’s how I made this one:

Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
1 tbsp sweet almond oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine sugar and oils in a small bowl. Add vanilla and stir to distribute evenly. Optional: Add a tablespoon of grated cocoa butter and mix well.

That’s it.

See? Super simple.

Now, I will say that I did not have coconut oil or sweet almond oil on hand. I had to buy it, and it was both kind of hard to find (because I didn’t read that part of the book first) and a little pricey. However, now that I have them, I can fill a TON of jars with scrubs – and in the end, it’s a really frugal gift.

Do you like giving homemade gifts?
Are you giving your kids’ teachers anything for Teacher Appreciation Day?

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