Pinterest Project: Shower Fizzies (a tale of trial and error)

Every year my extended family draws names and makes homemade gifts for each other for Christmas.

It's kind of a big deal...with it's very own chant every time someone is opening a homemade gift.

Anyway, this year Josh and I drew 2 of my girl cousins so I decided to make these:

I won't go into all the instructions (since you can read the ones on the link). I'll just detail what happened when I made them.

I chose peppermint and lavender for my scents and bought the oils ($6-$8 each) and a 5 lb bag of citric acid ($16) on Amazon (thank you, Amazon Prime!). I bought the ornament mold at Hobby Lobby for a couple bucks and I already had the food coloring and baking soda on hand. It put me slightly over budget, but they will last me a really long time and I should be able to make TONS of fizzies in the future.

So you mix the citric acid and baking soda together in a big bowl. Separately you mix water, essential oil and food coloring in another container to be VERY slowly added to your citric acid mixture. You don't want to get it wet and start the reaction too soon. The instructions suggest using a spray bottle (and then mixing till your hand comes loose at the joint) and that's what I found worked best as well.

And bonus! Now when we use the spray bottle to wet our hair, we smell like peppermint-lavender. Josh is especially appreciative. :)

Here's where my first error was. I did go really slowly in adding my liquid, but I got the citric acid mixture too damp. You should stop adding when it's able to just barely stick together in your hand.

You can see in the above picture that as soon as I put it in my mold, it started reacting and expanding. This is what you want it to do in the shower...not in your mold.

See? Big blobby mess on the left....yeah, you don't want that.

I learned better on my 2nd batch and stopped as soon as it could do this:

I left at least a tablespoon of liquid in my spray bottle.

And here's the final product...

Aren't they cute?

Now here's my one complaint. I kept a few of the peppermint fizzies to use in the shower and I haven't been able to smell them at all...which is the whole point. I was hoping to use these when I have a cold to clear my sinuses....something I've read lots of people do.

I used the recommended amount of drops of essential oils, but next time I will probably double it. (I can't believe how much those little bottles of oil hold! I barely put a dent in mine, even after 3 batches!)

Also, I am now in love with essential oils. I want to add them to everything! My homemade laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, etc. This girl is gonna have herself a par-tay....cause that's how I get down. :)

Let me know if you ever try these!