Making bath bombs with kids!

This post is titled "making bath bombs with kids" but to be honest it should be called "making bath bombs with my eldest, who's 7, because god knows what would happen if I let 2-year-old Phoebe near citric acid powder".  You get my point.

Lillia has been angling to make bath bombs at home ever since she went to her friend's birthday party at Lush and got to make their "space girl" bomb with glitter, purple dye and the works.  And to be honest I've been pretty keen on the idea ever since I was given James Wong's book Grow Your Own Medicine a few years ago.  So I finally ordered some citric acid powder from Amazon and bought up several pots of bicarbonate of soda and we were pretty much good to go.

 

We mixed up our bath bomb ingredients according to the recipe - citric acid powder, bicarb, olive oil and lavender oil and worked it into a dryish mix that could be pressed together in our moulds (unwilling to splash out on proper bath bomb moulds I used silicone baking cases which worked a treat.)  Lillia loved adding all the ingredients and measuring out the powders, though bear in mind we were clad in aprons and latex gloves! Lillia found the citric acid powder made her a little sneezey if we were too quick with our getting it into the bowl, but as long as we went slowly we found she was fine as we weren't creating too much "cloud".

Then we added dried lavender leaves that I had kept in a hand sewn pouch since I picked them in June 2009.  Four years ago!  FOUR!!

It still smells divine, and mixed with the lavender oil it smells even more so.  The first bomb we used in the girls' bath near enough knocked them unconscious with the sheer amount of relaxing aromas that exploded around the bathroom.

Lillia spent some time pressing the mix into the cases and making sure they were neat.  We made lemon and lavender ones too by using the same bowl we had mixed our 100% lavender ones in and adding lemon oil in place of lavender oil - this produced a lovely citrus bomb with a hint of lavender. Lovely.

The best part though of course is the moment they are ready to be dropped in a warm bath and release their oils and their fragrance in a fizzy explosion. Lillia can't get enough of these fizzling delights.  She is already planning her next range of flavours...watch out Lush! :)