A super inexpensive and no skills required gift to make: bath tea

Do you need a female gift, but are very short on cash? Are you making gifts from your kitchen and garden this year? Do you need a quick to make gift? This one meets this criteria, and is lovely to receive!

For my bath tea, I calculated my costs -- about 25-26 cents per bath tea bag, including decorative envelope, for presentation. If I made a gift or stocking stuffer of 2 bath tea bags, my cost would be about 50 cents.

I usually give my cost breakdown at the bottom of a post. But as this gift idea is billed as a low-cost one, I wanted to give cost breakdown, upfront.

My cost breakdown:

• flower petals and buds -- free from garden
• oats -- about 2/3 of a cent per tablespoon, purchased at 55 cents per pound, so under 3 cents per quarter cup (lavender bath tea), and 2 cents per 3 tablespoons (peach-rose bath tea)
• essential oils -- about 40-50 drops is .067 ounces of essential oil. My lavender oil, 4 ounces for about $14 on Amazon, so my cost on the lavender oil was about 23 cents, enough for 2 bath tea bags
• or, rose and peach soap-making fragrance oils, purchased w/ coupons (50 and 40% off coupons, respectively, for Michael's and Hobby Lobby), $2.50 for .5 oz of rose fragrance, and $2.40 for 1 oz. peach fragrance, using a combined amount of 40-50 drops, or .067 ounces, for a cost of about 25 cents of soap fragrance oil, if mixed 50/50 peach and rose. 
• paper tea bag, using coffee filters, purchased at Dollar Tree, 150 filters for $1, 1 filter needed for each bath tea bag, at a cost of 2/3 of a cent each
• tea-stained paper envelopes and ribbon for presentation, about 5-6 cents each envelope/ribbon

Bath tea is a blend of aromatics and skin soothers, neatly packaged in a little bag, to infuse your bath water for a heavenly soak. You drop the entire bag into the water as the tub fills up, and allow to steep throughout your soaking. The bag itself keeps the contents from making a huge mess in your tub.

what you'll need:

• disposable, large empty tea bags (to hold 1/4 cup of loose bath tea)
• dried flower petals/buds or herbs, from your garden, or leftover from a bouquet of flowers
• essential oils
• regular, uncooked oats
• a spice mill, blender, or coffee grinder to grind the oats, flowers/herbs

Gather your ingredients, make or obtain your tea bags.
You can purchase large tea bag empties, from a tea shop or a retailer like Amazon, such as Finum 100-ct large tea bags, for about $6 (6 cents each bag, a decent price if you want to make large quantities of bath tea as wedding shower favors).

Or, you can make your own tea bags out of paper, basket-style coffee filters. I use filters from Dollar Tree (150 filters for $1). Each filter makes one bag.

To make a tea bag from a coffee filter:

Flatten out the filter, and press with an iron on the lowest setting. It won't iron completely flat, but will flatten enough to make cutting and sewing easier, as well as give a better presentation.

Fold the filter in half. Use a ruler to mark a 3  1/2 inch wide section of the folded filter. 3 inches for the pocket of the filter, with 1/4-inch seams down each side.

Cut out the 3  1/2-inch wide section of the filter.

Sew up the sides, using 1/4-inch seam allowances, but leave the slightly curved opening un-sewn. Clip the threads. You now have a bag to fill with your bath tea!

Lavender Oatmeal Bath Tea

To make lavender and oat bath tea (recipe taken from the Aura Cacia pure essential oil's website ):

for 2 bags of tea --

• put 1/4 cup of regular oats into a coffee grinder or blender. Process until you have a coarse meal. Pour into a glass bowl.
• measure and add to the oats, 1/4 cup of lavender buds, mix together with your fingers
• add about 40-48 drops of lavender essential oil to the oats/lavender buds, and stir together.
• divide between 2 bags, and staple/seal closed (put 3 staples across the top of each bag, I know the photo at the top of page only shows 1 staple per bag, but 3 will prevent bath tea from leaking into the bath tub)
• store the bath tea bags in an airtight container or ziploc bags until use

Rose Petal and Peach Bath Tea

(As rose petal tea is heavier on the rose petals than the oats, you may find you can use less essential or fragrance oils. A lot will depend on how fragrant your petals are, naturally. Just an FYI.)

To make a soothing rose petal bath tea:
for 2 bags of tea --

• put about 3 tablespoons of oats into a coffee grinder and grind to a coarse meal
• in the coffee grinder, process dried rose petals, in 1/2 cup increments, until you have about 1/2 cup of packed, chopped rose petals. 
• mix the oats and rose petals in a glass bowl
• add 35-45 drops of rose oil, essential or soap-making fragrance oil, or blend of peach and rose fragrance oils. ( You can experiment with other fragrances, here. I used a blend of peach and rose soap-making fragrance, as that's what I had.) 
• divide between 2 bags, and staple closed
• store the bath tea in an airtight container or ziploc bags until use.

Include a tag with instructions for use:

To use, place one bath tea bag into the bathtub, as it fills with hot water. Allow to steep for the duration of your bath. 

It's a good idea to try one of sachets, before filling all of them. You can keep your bath tea mixture in an airtight container, loose, until you are certain of the strength of fragrance you want. An easy "tea bag" for testing the mixture is simply one coffee filter, with mixture in center of flat filter, then sides pulled up together, and held closed with a rubber band.

Decorative packaging, the paper envelopes, next week. . .

Budgeting and stocking my pantry

Right now, mid-autumn, finds some of the lowest prices of the year on many basic grocery items, including potatoes, fresh squash, canned vegetables, canned pineapple, cream cheese, butter, turkey, ham, fresh celery, canned pumpkin, nuts and other holiday baking items, and coffee. This is the time of year that I do the largest of my stocking up, to feed us well, through several months, and avoid some of the high produce prices of mid to late winter.

canned vegetables, potatoes and celery
When I find a stellar deal, I think in terms of months, not weeks, to gauge how much I want to buy. WinCo has had canned vegetables on sale for 33 cents per can for the last couple of weeks. I calculated how many cans we'd likely go through between now and early March, and bought 8 cases, and may pick up 1 or 2 more cases (12 cans per case). It sounds like a lot, but we will go through all of this, and probably faster than anticipate.

I also noticed that canned pumpkin and canned yams, in the larger 29-oz cans, were a good price at WinCo when I stopped in last week. I picked up a few cans with the remaining cash I had with me. I will be stopping in this coming Friday, to stock up further on those. And in looking at this week's ad for Fred Meyer, potatoes in 10-lb bags are advertised for 88 cents/bag (limit 2). Fresh potatoes will keep in my pantry and fridge, through January. I will be buying about 80 lbs. this year.

By purchasing so many of our vegetables in cans, this year, I have freed up space in my freezer for a particular, non-canned vegetable -- celery. I will be buying several (maybe 8-10, depending on price) bunches of celery, to chop and freeze, to use in soups and casseroles, throughout winter.

loss-leader meat purchases
Turkeys and hams are also a good buy between now and Christmas. I will buy 1 whole turkey for Thanksgiving, and a second for the freezer., to roast in late winter. I have 1 ham remaining from last year, still in the freezer. I will use that over the holidays, and buy 1 or 2 more for the freezer. (I can usually find ham at the same sale price just before Easter, as I can at Christmas, therefore no need to really stock up on ham.)

I've been watching the retail price for whole turkeys by reading the weekly USDA retail report on turkey supply and price. If you follow that link, there are prices for the different regions of the US. All but the PNW and Alaska have a retail price available for whole turkey this week. The low end of prices on whole turkeys is 37 to 69 cents per pound. There's also this, from the USDA "Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook", October 18, 2016, "Price forecasts were reduced across broilers, turkeys, and eggs for 2016 and reduced for broilers and eggs for 2017." This is in an article talking about export production and price. But this information, combined with the weekly price report, does suggest that local retail prices on whole turkeys could be lower this year, over last year's pre-Thanksgiving deals.

baking supplies
I have already bought about 15 pounds of nuts, about a dozen packages of chocolate chips, a couple of bags of coconut, and enough powdered sugar to get through the year's baking needs.

ability to afford these stock-up months
How does one afford to do all of this stocking up? In part, I have set aside grocery money in the past few months, just for this purpose. In the late summer and early fall months, I deliberately spend less than my monthly budgeted amount of $190, in order to save extra for the months of November and December.

But also -- many of these items are a bargain, compared to comparable foods we might eat. Such as canned vegetables (33 cents/15 oz) compared to some of the fresh/frozen vegetables (often 79 cents/lb and up). During a big stock-up month, like right now, we shift our eating patterns to focus on these less expensive versions of foods.

A couple of my "rules" for sparing cash in the budget, this month:

• This is not the time of year to be buying out-of-season strawberries, or expensive cuts of meat.
• We eat from some of our stock-up items, as a way to curb spending right now.
• Menus rely heavily on the less expensive foods, like beans and whole grains, and eggs when bought as loss-leaders.
• Limit splurges, and convenience items, as much as possible. To make humble meals more interesting, this time of year, I begin opening jars of homemade pickles, chutneys and relishes.

Those 8 cases of canned vegetables are not just for mid-winter. Our meals are using those right now. Canned green beans, peas and corn are good just as is, but are also versatile in what you can do with, or add to them.

Canned peas are good hot or cold. As a hot vegetable, I rinse them, then add dried mint and butter. Or, I can make a simple hot soup, with canned peas, pureed, as the base, and cubed, cooked potatoes and carrots added, plus some ham or chicken stock with bits of meat. As a cold vegetable, canned peas are nice added to macaroni and potato salads, slaws, or gelatin aspic salads.

Canned corn is great added to Tex-Mex dishes, or, made into an egg-based entree, like Corn Pudding, or, baked in cornbread. As a cold dish, canned corn is good made into a relish, adding some green or red peppers (or canned pimentos), onions, vinegar, sugar, salt and pickling spice.

I have always been fond of canned green beans just as they are. But I also like to serve them hot, with either sauteed mushrooms, or, chopped, toasted almonds, or, topped with a cracker and butter crumb topping. As well, canned green beans are good cold, in multi-bean salads, dressed in a vinaigrette.

WinCo has had acorn squash for 78 cents each -- not per pound, but each, where I live. I pick out the 4 or 5 heaviest ones. At over 3 pounds each, our cost is about 25 cents per pound -- and that's an excellent price per pound for a vegetable. We're eating acorn squash 3 to 4 meals per week. Yes, it can be redundant. But I am trying to savor this time of year, with fresh squash in abundance.

We are eating bean-based meals about half of each week, and frozen, low-cost meats like the remaining turkey from last year, chicken hindquarters, and ground beef bought for under $2/lb, for the remainder of each week.

Right now, I am holding off on buying fresh oranges and avocados. In about 1 month, the price on both of those items will begin dropping, and will be more affordable.

Instead, our fresh fruit selection is limited to a few remaining pears and apples, plus bananas, purchased either at Trader Joe's for 19 cents each, or at WinCo or Cash & Carry, from 40 to 48 cents per pound. We also have foraged blackberries, our tree plums, and rhubarb sauce in the freezer, to round out some of the fruit selection in November.

By eating less expensive meals for this entire month, we free up enough cash in the grocery budget to afford to stock up for future months. As I was looking through my purchases last Friday, I noted that about 75% of what I bought that day were purely stock-up items, foods that will last us longer than 2 weeks.