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I love giving gifts – I especially love finding the PERFECT gift. I move very much with my inspiration though, so some years my friends and family get cookie cutter trinkets and other years they get the most amazing and thoughtful gift that fits their personality perfectly.

I also love to crochet (of course). But the thought process and actual labor process that goes into that is often intimidating to me when I’m thinking of a big lots-of-gifts holiday like Christmas.

Ever since my descent into essential oil addiction I’ve loved making little DIYs for my friends and family (or anyone who will accept them from me lol). They are quick, easy, and don’t require any skills or carpal tunnel strain like crocheting does 😉

So here are a few ideas I’m using this year. They are inexpensive and quick to put together, but will probably require a little shopping. (Unless you have 1,000 essential oils and glass bottles on hand like I do #addict.)

Holiday Room Spray

This one is so easy. You could make a big batch and them put them into gift sized bottles and have instant gifts for everyone. To go with the “holiday scent” use essential oils like Thieves, Cinnamon Bark, Peppermint, Nutmeg, Orange, Pine or other evergreen oils. For this particular recipe I’m listing Thieves + Orange + Cinnamon Bark because it’s my favorite.

Ingredients:

• 10-15 drops each of Thieves, Orange and Cinnamon Bark essential oils (or others of your choice, but I would try to make it around 30-45 drops total for a 4 oz bottle)
• 1 oz of 190 proof or higher grain alcohol (if you use lower percentage alcohol or witch hazel, you will need to shake well before use)
• 3 oz distilled water
• 4 oz spray bottle

Drop your essential oils into your bottle, followed by the alcohol. Let them sit for a minute to dissolve. Fill up the rest of the spray bottle with distilled water, shake it up a bit, and you’re done! If you want to make bigger or smaller spray bottles, just multiply/divide the recipe accordingly. This one is for a 4 oz spray bottle.

Water Bead Diffuser

You may have seen similar products in the scented candle section of your local department store – a small jar of water beads colored and scented in a hundred different ways. But these are scented with synthetic fragrances with ingredients they don’t have to disclose. You don’t want to give that to your friends for Christmas!

They won’t fill an entire room with a the scent, but they are perfect for desks, offices, or nightstands.

This is also a very simple DIY project. You’ll only need 3 things (well 4 if you count water):

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon Water beads (I chose clear ones for this project)
• Water
• Mason Jar
• 30-40 drops essential oils (I used Young Living’s Christmas Spirit!)
• You can get a pretty large pack of water beads off Amazon for around $10. A little will go a looong way. These things are crazy. You can also get inserts for mason jar lids that already have cut-out patterns that are seasonal. Or you could use a hole punch 🙂

Soak the water beads according to the directions on the package (they usually take a few hours to fully expand). My 1 tablespoon was more than enough for one mason jar, but it’s easier to soak them up in batches. Fill up your mason jars with the fully soaked beads, and put 30-40 drops of the essential oils of your choice into each one. These aren’t meant to used indefinitely, but you could include a small bottle of oil so your giftees can keep it going a little longer. If they add some water and more oils every few days it should lengthen its life.

Simple Sugar Scrub

Who doesn’t love some pampering for Christmas? Probably no one! Sugar scrub is a good generic gift for anyone you know. Either as an add-on or stocking stuffer, or the main component in a small gift bag for teachers, acquaintances, etc. It’s also surprisingly simple to make from scratch.

Ingredients:

• Coarse grained sugar
• Mason jar (or other glass jar)
• Soothing or invigorating essential oils
• Moisturizing carrier oil such as olive, grape seed, or coconut oil

There’s not much to this one – fill up your jar with sugar, add your carrier oil (use about a 1:3 ratio of oil to sugar – for example if you had 1 cup of sugar you’ll probably need about 1/3 cup of oil), then add about 10-20 drops of essential oils per cup of sugar. Mix it all up and voila! You’re done.

Here are some example blends:

• Christmas Cookie: Peppermint + Stress Away

• Wake-Me-Up Scrub: Lemon/citrus

• Spa Scrub: Lavender + Orange

• Skin Soothing Scrub: Tea Tree and/or Chamomile

All these gifts are quick to make and small in size. You can make them in batches or keep some on hand for those neighbors you didn’t think would actually stop by. If you end up with extra, more for you!

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