A few weeks ago, when Anouk had a bad cold, our neighbor brought over a few bath bombs from Lush as a little treat for her. A. ended up liking them so much that she's been bugging me for more ever since. Of course we love Lush around these parts but why buy when you can DIY? Bath fizzes seemed like something that would be really hard to make, but was a surprisingly easy and  kid-friendly project.

DIY Bath Bombs (adapted from this recipe by Martha Stewart)

You'll need:

• 1 3/4 cups baking soda
• 1 cup citric acid  (a powder; we found ours at Wine and Cake hobbies, in their wine-making section but you can also find it online here.)
• 2 cups corn starch
• coconut oil
• essential oil of your choice
• food coloring (optional)
• spray bottle of water

Directions:

Sift the following the baking soda, corn starch, and citric acid into a bowl and mix well.

Transfer one cup of the mixture to a glass bowl. Add the liquefied coconut oil, a little at a time, mixing well with your hands. With your spray bottle, gently mist the mixture and mix with your hands between spritzes, until the mixture is moldable (holds shape when you squeeze it). NOTE: if you want your bombs to be colored, add food coloring to the water in the spray bottle. If you hear the mixture fizzing, you're adding too much water.

Add 5-6 drops of essential oil and mix again. Press firmly into cupcake liners or molds. After 2 hours, the mixture can be unmolded, but we found it was better to leave them overnight.




We made two different kinds of fizzies -- peppermint for the holidays and chamomile, for a relaxing bedtime bath. With the chamomile, I just tore open three or four tea bags and emptied them into the powder mix before adding the oil. The scent is really mild but there. Next time I might try chamomile essential oil to make it a little stronger. For peppermint, I used peppermint extract, from the baking aisle. It's a little less potent than the oil but still smells delish.

Store the leftover mixture (if there is any) in a ziploc bag to make more later. It should keep for a few weeks, as long as it doesn't get wet.

We're thinking of giving these away as Christmas presents to our friends. In the meantime we've been having a lot of fun testing them out.