I mentioned this idea in my Affordable and Smaller Gifts video and thought I’d show you the finished result. Himalayan pink bath salts (the “in” thing of the moment and often extortionately priced) rustically packaged up in a Kilner jar (or something prettier, if you have it) and finished off with a rather kitsch artificial rose. I’ll tell you why I like this as a gift: 1) it’s an enormous amount of bath salt for your buck – and these are effective, lovely bath salts not weird peach-smelling ones that will possibly give you thrush or some other kind of gynaecological situation; 2) the Kilner jar is reusable and inherently useful, so there’s no wastage; 3) you can pick up everything at your supermarket as you whizz about snapping up the last of the mince pies and sprouts and goose fat and so on.

The cost of some of these luxury Himalayan salts online can cost up to £10 per 100g – mine, which are distributed by “Dr Salts” (no idea, have never heard of him!) cost fifty pence per 100g. Now – as I have said previously – I do not know whether there’s a significant difference between the two versions; perhaps they are sourced differently or one batch is more ethical or one type has been blessed by naked virgins at midnight. I have no idea, and I will endeavour to do some finding out on this in the New Year. But I’ve checked the ingredients list on both luxury and budget versions and they say the same thing: salt.

So, grab a Kilner and a hefty bag of these lovely, detoxifying beauties and get pouring. I used a large jar so that there was space for my faux-rose, feel free to use a jar half the size and fill to the brim. I suppose it looks more generous, in a way. But if you do want to go down the decorative route then you can find fake flowers at those big hobby and craft stores and at quite a few florists (ironically!) and also in the supermarket if you’re lucky. A nice alternative could be to write a little note on brown paper, curl it into a scroll and tie with some twine before popping into the jar on top of the salts. Message-in-a-bottle style. You could say something along the lines of “Himalayan Detoxifying Bath Salts: The Ultimate SOS”. Or similar. Knock yourselves out!

Here are the salts online, for those who want to take a look: Sainsburys.co.uk. They also do salts at Waitrose – if you’ve seen them anywhere else then do put it in the comments, for the benefit of your fellow good readers!