Making Science Girlie

These days Brownies earn both Keys and merit badges. Keys are worked on and earned together as a group. We work on four Keys a year to make sure the girls can earn all the Keys over the two year program. 

The last couple meetings we have been working on the Key to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

Specifically - Why do things go fizz, pop, or do nothing at all when mixed together? Bath bombs are the perfect way to teach the girls some basic chemistry AND have a gift to give their moms at the end-of-year mother-daughter banquet.

Before we started, we demonstrated what happens when we mix baking soda and vinegar (which contains acetic acid). They were hoping for some gigantic explosion but unfortunately they would have to settle for  some fizz and a little pop.

While that was fresh in their minds - we showed them a bath bomb and told them that is what we were going to make. After all the oohing and ahhhing, we told them the ingredients that we needed.

• Baking Soda
• Citric Acid
• Olive Oil
• Corn Starch
• Epsom Salts
• Water
• Food Colouring
• Essential Oil (we chose citrus essential oil)

After going through each ingredient it was determined that:

• Baking soda & Citric Acid make the fizz;
• Corn Starch, water & Olive Oil keep everything together but the olive oil is also good for your skin;
• Epsom salts have many benefits including; reducing stress & promotes relaxation, relieves pain & muscle cramps, eliminates toxins from the today etc.;
• Essential Oil makes it smell nice and relaxing people; and 
• Food colouring, well makes it pretty.

We had the girls work in three groups and had them mix the dry ingredients first 

Dry ingredients: 

• Baking Soda - 2 cups
• Citric Acid - 1 cup
• Corn Starch - 1 cup
• Epsom Salts - 1 cup

Afterwards we had the girls mix the wet ingredients into a mason jar to they could simply shake it to mix.

Wet Ingredients:

• Water - 1/2 tbsp
• Essential Oil - 2 tsp 
• Oil - 2.5 tbsp (I used cherry kernel, but any light vegetable oil will work.)
• Food colouring - 1 or 2 drops

Then, while stirring, slowly add small amounts of the liquid to the dry ingredients.

If the mixture starts to foam, the liquid is being added too quickly. When all of the wet ingredients have been added, the mixture should feel like damp sand. 

Now it's time to mould the bath bombs - I liberated a million or so paper cups from McDonald's (you know the ones for ketchup). I told the girls to make sure to pack the mix tightly in the paper cups. This is very important or they might not keep their shape. Benefit of the paper cups, easy for the girls to mould AND we can just peel them back revealing the beautifully crafted bath bombs.

Time to carefully remove the bath bomb from the paper cup.

We can't just give the bath bombs out to the moms looking like this. Some gift appropriate packaging is required.

Not every bath bomb wanted to be freed in one piece from the mould. There were some bath bomb casualties. They are now resting peacefully in my bathroom.  Bad news for the girls, good news for me.

Stamping my way to marital bliss

I love stamps.

There I said it. It all began in University when I found a self-inking heart stamp with my name on it, that never happens. Ok, that rarely happens. It was downhill from there.

After I got engaged, I decided to look for a thank-you stamp, surely I would need that AND I could make my own thank-you cards. What I found was much more exciting and admittedly perhaps I went a little overboard in the stamp department.

I found 2 amazing artists on Etsy who made hand-carve portrait stamps. We (by we, I mean me) decided to ordered them, they would be perfect for invite-like things.

First I made engagement party invites.

All we had to do was send a photo and money (of course) to Dear You From Kozue 

And she sent a sketch for us to approve before she started carving away.

Once the stamp arrived, David & I began stamping away - stamping, stamping and even more stamping. Stamp stamp stamp stamp - you get the idea.

The engagement party invites proved to be a big hit, so much in fact that we decided to try our luck at incorporating some stamping action into our Save the Dates. I am sure all David could think was, "God, more stamping?"

This time we used a custom portrait stamp AND an address stamp. The address stamp is the perfect in between option, more whimsical than plain labels but far far far more affordable than hand written calligraphy (who has money for that anyways?). We plan to get as much use out of this address stamp as we can because once we move it's basically useless. Cute but useless.

Second portrait stamp was from: Lilimandrill 

Address stamp was from: Primele 

Same rules applied, we supplied a photo and cash and they supplied a sketch for our approval.

Once both the portrait stamp and the address stamp arrived we started planning how we were going to use them. 

First we designed the Save the Date card.

DD/MM/YYYY - I live in Canada eh!

Then I armed David with an x-acto knife and a glue stick!

We were happy to finally get them all mailed out. David is already dreading what I have in store for our actual wedding invites. He should probably be afraid.