Bath Bombs

Courtney and I made bath bombs last night. She bought some at LUSH - Kai, Courtney and I all enjoy them. The recipe here looked easy, so we tried a variation of that recipe. I ordered an enormous bag of citric acid from Amazon (10 pounds, we will either be making a ton of bath bombs or Kai and I will be doing some interesting "experiments").

When I gathered the ingredients last night, Bryce was skeptical of my intentions. When I got out the wonderful tare weight scale Craig got me, Bryce decided I was making "blue candy" and I decided he's been watching far too much "Breaking Bad." The rather interesting thing about using a scale was that I dumped the 1 pound box of baking soda into the bowl and discovered that the box actually had 17.5 ounces baking soda. I adjusted the recipe accordingly to keep the proportions the same.

We mixed 17.5 ounces baking soda, 8.75 ounces citric acid, 8.75 ounces of Episom salts and 8.75 ounces corn starch in a big bowl. As Courtney whisked the dry ingredients, I squirted scented baby oil in until we had a consistency we thought would work (this seemed easier than finding essential oils and other bath oils...but it also resulted in extremely oily bath bombs...we have plans for more experimentation on this part of the process). We used old plastic Easter eggs as molds, filling only the larger side and popping them out as we went. As you'll see in the picture, we added food coloring for about half of them.

I took a bath with two last night - the fizz didn't last long and the water became extremely oily. We will explore different oils and maybe adding water (I'm wary of water because whenever Kai and I use it in our "experiments" using this same reaction, we have trouble adding small enough amounts).

Because I'm not in love with this batch of bath bombs, I let Kai play with several in her bath today. The shape of the bath bombs sparked a great deal of imagination play. She cracked an "egg" (one of the white bath bombs) into the bowl where she was making pancake batter and chopped up a "tomato" nearby:

After she added the purple bath bomb to her batter she added a bit of water:

She had a great time playing with the bath bombs, but I told her next time we would have to do these experiments outside. She and the bathtub were so oily I had to put her in the shower when we finished. I think we could make different colored "bombs" and have fun outside outside with a squirt bottle of water, bowls, and the like.

Kai Projects: Fun with Jello

After my success with Kool-Aid, I decided to see what we could do with jello. I got some cheap salt shakers at Target and filled them with jello. The first day, we used the part of the jello packet that didn't fit in the salt shakers to make jello play dough. So far, this is my favorite of the jello projects.

This was the recipe I found on Pinterest:

1 cup flour
1 cup water
2 T salt
2 T cream of tartar
2 T oil
1 box jello

Mix together and cook on the stove over low/medium heat until a ball forms. Knead in extra flour until no longer sticky.

Because I only had partial boxes of jello, I made several smaller batches. This also gave us a variety of colors. I basically quartered the recipe and made five batches. In this picture you can see the three finished balls of play dough, the blue play dough cooling before we kneaded in extra flour, and Kai mixing the last batch of yellow play dough before I put it on the stove. You can also see my filled salt shakers behind a flour covered Kai:

This stuff is amazing - by far the best play dough we've made at home. It has a very nice texture and it smells lovely, not at all like the commercial stuff. Kai has played with it several times now (it is starting to get a bit mixed together, but it has maintained its other qualities):

This morning we tried our usual shaving cream paint with the jello. I don't think the colors are quite as bright as I would like. I used our sidewalk chalk method, mixing the jello with water before adding the shaving cream. I think this might work better if I skipped the water.

The other thing we did with jello was make "glue play dough" or gak / flubber. We've done this before with food coloring, but I thought it would be interesting to try with jello. Again we used our five colors:

For some reason, the yellow didn't set up properly (I wonder if it is because we used more yellow jello due to the lighter color and this interfered with the glue/borax reaction) and I ended up throwing it out. Kai began mixing this immediately:

When I pulled it out of the fridge this morning, the mixture was complete - it's purple with a few green and red highlights:

The consistency was odd this morning, though. I've left it out at room temperature to see if it will improve. This may be one project that needs to have food coloring.

Kai Projects: Fun with Shaving Cream

I've hardly posted since Courtney started school, because my time has been filled doing "projects" with Kai. Here are a few of our favorites with shaving cream.

Kai loves shaving cream "paint" - shaving cream mixed with color. She enjoys making the paint, adding the colors, mixing it up, and finding out what color it will be. We initially used food coloring, but that dyed our hands and clothes (and I was worried about dying the pavement in the backyard by accident). We made our own powdered paint out of sidewalk chalk. I bought a big box of sidewalk chalk. We sorted the colors and put similar colors into ziplock bags. Then we pounded the chalk with hammers until we had powder. Here we added the chalk powder to the shaving cream in our craft muffin tin (an old muffin tin that is no longer used for cooking):

It was hard to mix the powdered chalk with the shaving cream. So the next time, we mixed the chalk with water in the tin before adding the shaving cream. This resulted in brighter colors and better consistency paint:

My other favorite coloring agent is Kool-Aid. We've used other powdered drink mixes (as pictured here), but I love the smell of Kool-Aid! Here we've mixed it with water and shaving cream in Kai's squirt bottles (it separated a bit in the picture, but it mixed as she squirted it out):

For some reason, this was the logical thing for Kai to do with this paint:

At least it was a warm day, so both Kai and the pavement were easy to hose off when she finished.

Kansas Visit

While Craig took Bryce to tour colleges across the U.S., I went back to Kansas for a visit. The visit started wonderfully...mom had prepared for my visit by making bread and cinnamon rolls for me (she also bought chai latte for me and almond milk):

One morning, I went out while mom was feeding the cats. See if you can tell how many there are:

Jacob, Caiden, and my dad started a project for me. I particularly like the first picture where Jacob is working while Caiden and my dad assess the situation:

Kaitlin showed me her model poses:

Jacob was unimpressed:

Surprise! (Filling in the blanks)

You may have noticed some conspicuous holes in my blog this week. We've been planning a big surprise, so I had to keep things vague. In his spare time this weekend (during our 17 hour volunteer event), Craig negotiated the purchase of a new car for me, by email. We had planned to pick up the car and sign the paperwork Monday night after work.

The reason this was all a secret is that we planned to give Bryce my old car. Mentioning any of it here had the possibility of ruining that surprise. So...here are the pictures and things I left out this last week.

We weren't able to get the car Monday night because we spent the evening at urgent care. We weren't able to reschedule for Tuesday because I was ordered to keep my foot elevated and iced...and Craig was rather serious about having me follow through on the doctor's orders. But on Wednesday, we began the delicate dance of our preparations. First, we had to take my old car to be detailed. I drove Craig's car, with my left foot, to the car wash with Kai. Craig drove my car and we left it there. We had to go back several hours later to pick up my car. It hasn't looked so nice since I drove it away from the dealership new!

Then we headed to the Mini dealership to get my new car!

Here we are, Wednesday night, after getting home:

I had to drive my brand new car home with only my left foot! It was a bit of an adventure. But that's the reason we had dinner so late that Kai was eating the pepperoni as she put it on her pizza...

And on Thursday, we took my new car again when we ran errands. Craig drove this time, so I could play with the navigation and other settings. I have satellite radio! (Of course, we had to call about that to fix it while we drove, but still.) In this picture, Kai is "helping" me with my crutches outside Bed, Bath & Beyond:

Kai Thursday

Craig stayed home from work again on Thursday. Thank goodness for his flexible schedule! We started with breakfast outside:

While Craig was making breakfast, Kai showed me that she could ride her scooter in the grass (she couldn't, actually, but she kept trying it because there wasn't enough room on the pavement for her turning skills):

At one point, she turned to me and announced, "Now I can give up my chu-chus!" She agreed to give up her chu-chus (pacifiers) when Maurico bought the scooter for her. As she hasn't followed through on her end of the agreement, the scooter mostly sits in her room as a reminder. I'll believe her announcement when I see it (not yet):

As soon as we finished breakfast, Kai announced that she was ready for a nap. The housekeepers, however, had other plans - they were still cleaning her room. We talked Kai into a bath before her nap (in my tub, of course, that was the bribe):

After Kai's nap, we played for awhile while Craig had some conference calls and meetings. We ran some errands together, then we came home to make dinner. Kai helped me put potatoes in water, for mashed potatoes. She helped me put brussel sprouts in a bowl so I could cook them. And she entertained me outside when Craig pushed me out of the kitchen (he insisted I sit down):

Finally, we sat down to a delicious dinner - Kai even tried everything!

Kai Wednesday

Craig stayed home again on Wednesday, which turned out to be a very good idea. I thought I was getting better, but I managed to sleep until 11:30! As I was starting to wake up, Kai came up to tuck me in (as if I needed to sleep more!). She brought a variety of things to put me to bed with, and Craig took a picture of me with all those things when he came upstairs:

When I finally got up, it was time for lunch. I was able to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Kai, with her expert help. Craig made up some leftovers for me and a sandwich for himself. It took all afternoon to accomplish the errands we had delayed Monday night - with me driving with my left foot and Kai needing a nap in the middle. We managed to make pizza dough, though, so when we finally got home, we started on our pizzas.

Kai was so hungry she took a bit out of each pepperoni before she put it on her pizza. We had to take a picture of this unusual method:

And her resulting pizza (it isn't cheese covering the pepperonis, Kai took a bite out of each and every one!):

And our pizzas: