Stressful Times Call for Bathtub Tea

I come from a long line of nail-biters, hand-wringers and floor-pacers. My BIG project is due at the end of this month, and I'm more than a little anxious about it. On the whole, I'm handling the work-load well, but for me, stress, and mounting insecurities are my most powerful adversaries. As a champion worrier, I've spent years trying to tailor a de-stressing routine that suits my lifestyle. Exercise is always a good thing. However, my secret weapon for mitigating stress, happens in the bathroom. When the going gets tough, the tough takes a bath. 

Long, hot soaks in the tub (or showers, in a pinch) are equivalent to touching "base" in the middle of a frenzied game of tag. In the bath, my stress melts away and my jumbled thoughts become clear. 

I have a friend who makes her own bath-salt mixes. When we worked together, she'd often bring me bags of the stuff to dump directly in the tub when I needed to give myself a "time-out". While her recipe was divine, I often felt like I was marinating in a stew of dried flower bits and floating sacks of oil. I would get out of the tub with roses stuck to my thighs and lavender flowers matted into my scalp. Honestly, sometimes that was a really nice thing. But other times, it wasn't.

With her soothing bath mix in mind, and the reality that I don't have time to (for lack of a better phrase) "de-flower" myself after a soak, I decided to put my own bath mix directly into tea bags that would steep in the hot bath water, and contain all of the flowery bits while infusing the tub with lovely smells and relaxing oils.

Here's what I used to create my bathtub tea bags:
Extra Large Tea Bags
Dried lavender Flowers
Bath Salts (or Epsom Salt)
Dried Hyacinth Flowers
Bath Beads (filled with fragrant oil)
You can also use dried roses, dried chamomile, dried mint etc...

Place 1-2 cups Epsom salt into a large bowl, and mix in 1/2 cup of the dried flowers and herbs. Add a handful of bath beads, and fill each tea bag with the mix. My first batch of bathtub tea bags was only filled up to about the half-way point. Next time, I think I will fill the tea bags 3/4 of the way full.

Once the bags are filled, fold the edges together as if you were wrapping a present (see above), and sew the bag closed. I folded the pointed tips of the tea bags down, and adorned them with embroidered hearts. Using the same colored embroidery thread, I added a tea bag string that measured about 12-inches long (which hangs nicely from the bathtub faucet.)

After running a hot bath, soaking in the relaxing and calming waters, and washing away my immediate worries, I'm now lavender-scented, clear-minded and ready for another day of hard work, hand-wringing and focus! Hope you enjoy!

Note: These bathtub tea bags, when paired with my homemade sugar scrub would make for a very soothing Mother's Day gift.