House Guest Gift Idea - Easy Sugar Scrub Recipe

If you want to impress your house guests, leave a little gift for them in their room. Even better, leave a homemade gift! I've partnered with NOW® to show you an easy sugar scrub recipe so you can surprise your guests and send them home with a little reminder of their visit.

There's nothing like opening up the door to your hotel room or bed & breakfast and finding a sweet gift upon your arrival. Even the smallest token feels like a treasure! My friend Jen knows this, and that's why she always leaves her guests a handwritten note and thoughtful gift so they can remember their time at her home. As I mentioned in my post about how to make soy wax candles, she'd been buying pretty expensive locally-made gifts so that her guests could bring a bit of Florida home with them, but I thought we could make guest gifts for much less money. Plus, I figured if we made them, it would be that much more meaningful and heartfelt.

Jen had previously purchased a batch of handmade candles, but we found that making our own was actually pretty fun and we could create any scent combination we liked thanks to my supply of NOW® essential oils. We made "Key lime" scented candles (yes, I know the essential oil isn't made from actual Key limes but we wanted the candles to have more of a Florida-theme), but we thought we should have something to go along with the candle. That's when I thought back to the peppermint sugar scrub I made over the holidays. A coordinating sugar scrub would be perfect!

Homemade Sugar Scrub

I have to say, making sugar scrub is super easy if you have the right products. For the base of the sugar scrub, all you need is NOW Foods Turbinado Sugar and NOW Coconut Oil. NOW has several types of oil, but I like using their Organic Virgin Coconut Oil and melting in the microwave until it becomes liquid.

Once you have your base sugar scrub recipe, you can add any combination of essential oils you'd like to create your homemade sugar scrubs. For the "Key lime" sugar scrub, we simply used lime oil. We were going to add a touch of vanilla as well but decided we didn't need to since the scent of the coconut oil gave us that tropical and sweet smell we were looking for.

We also made a "Florida citrus" sugar scrub using NOW's uplifting blend of essential oils called Smiles for Miles. It's a great blend of the following oils: orange, bergamot, grapefruit, lime, lemon, cinnamon bark, nutmeg, ginger, and natural vanilla extract. Again, we just used the term "Florida" since this was a themed gift. You could just call it a citrus scrub.

What I love about NOW essential oils is that they're so affordable compared to other brands. Since NOW has such a great relationship with its distributors and order such large volumes, they get tremendous savings which they then pass onto their customers. As I said in my post about visiting their headquarters and getting to know NOW Foods, they've got an in-house laboratory that tests for purity, so you can be sure that you're getting exactly what you're paying for.

Homemade Sugar Scrub

Citrus Sugar Scrub Recipe

• 1 cup of NOW Turbinado Sugar
  ½ cup of NOW Coconut Oil
  30 drops of NOW Smiles for Miles Essential Oil (more or less depending on your scent preference)

Lime Sugar Scrub Recipe

• 1 cup of NOW Turbinado Sugar
• ½ cup of NOW Coconut Oil
• 30 drops of NOW Lime Essential Oil

How to make Sugar Scrub

To make these sugar scrubs, start by microwaving your coconut oil until it's liquified (this was about 2 minutes for us). Mix the coconut oil and turbinado sugar until it's blended well. Next, add the essential oil of your choice. That's it! It's so easy. Each recipe will make three 4-ounce jars. We found ours locally, but you can also purchase them on Amazon, depending on how many you need.

I created small tags for our candles and scrubs and have them HERE if you'd like to print them for yourself. You can either punch a hole in the tag and tie them to the jars with ribbon, or you can cut the tags out and place them under the canning ring if you have jars that have rings.

If you're looking for even more ways to use essential oils, check out my homemade all-purpose cleaner recipe and my refreshing essential oil body spray.

Caution: NOW® Solutions Essential Oils are very concentrated and can be irritating to the skin. Avoid direct contact with skin and always dilute essential oils before topical use.