Homemade Spa Quality Bath Fizzies

The thing I enjoy most about the Christmas season, is homemade / handmade projects. I enjoy making candies, fudge, savory treats, as well as other non-food gifts. This year I decided to peruse several recipes and suggestions on how to make DIY bath fizzies. I enjoy quality spa products, but don't necessarily enjoy the prices that come along with those products. With Oscar and Ella both loving every minute of bath time, I thought it would be nice to make some bath fizzies for them to enjoy. As well as letting them give some of them away to a few of their young cousins. 

So I experimented a few rounds and finally came up with a recipe that I feel works really well. One, that is no where near the complexity that the Martha Stewart recipe was. And one that is completely customize-able to your own aesthetics in color and essential oils used. In the end I had lavender ones, Cinnamon-clove ones, and Lemongrass ones. They all smell wonderful. 

 All packaged up in cellophane bags for gift giving.

 Complete with lime green bow.

 Another view.

Easy to make. And fun for adults and children alike.

Dan's Homemade Spa Bath Bombs (Fizzies) 

1 c cornstarch

1 c baking soda

1/4 c epsom salt

1 c citric acid

20-30+ drops essential oil

food coloring

water in spray bottle

soap mold or mini-muffin tin

Directions:

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. Add essential oil until desired scent is achieved and mix. I use my fingers and just mix it together really well. Add several drops of food coloring to water in spray bottle, to make a very concentrated color so that minimal sprays will give maximum tinting. Spray mixture with water bottle and mix with hands until barely moist. *Be careful not to add too much water as it will take all the fizz out of the bomb, so use barely as much as you need, just so that these hold together. 

Press firmly / pack into a soap mold or muffin tin. Let dry several hours or overnight.

Each batch makes about 12-16 fizzies in a mini-muffin tin.

Notes:

I did about 2 TBS water in the small squirt bottle, with 5-10 drops of food color. So it was really concentrated, and a little mist went a long way in terms of dying the solution.

Variations:

       Lemongrass essential oil, with yellow-green food color

       Orange / cinnamon / clove essential oils, with orange food color

           Lavender essential oil, with purple food color

Christmas Cookie Exchange

We decided to start a new Christmas tradition in our new home, a cookie exchange. We do do a lot of entertaining this time of year, but mostly in the fall. We both felt a Christmas cookie exchange would be a fun thing to do as a family. And as Oscar grows older had an help prepare cookies and invite his friends down the road to be a part of it all.  

Holly and I each came up with a new recipe to share. It was fun perusing many cookbooks and looking online. I decided to to a traditional chocolate chip cookie, but added a bunch of toffee bits and pretzel chunks into the batter. It came out to be a nice salty-sweet concoction.

Holly made a really rich & dark chocolate cookie with chunks of peppermint and white chocolate chunks in it. The fun thing about a cookie exchange is you can try all sorts of new things and add some new recipes to your cooking repertoire.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Holly Craven

1-1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup dutch-process cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 ounces good quality semi sweet chocolate coarsely chopped

4 to 6 ounces peppermint chunks (such as Andes baking pieces)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1-1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla or pure peppermint extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl.

Melt the 4 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate with the butter in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Let it cool slightly.

Put chocolate mixture, sugar, eggs and extract in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until combined. Reduce the speed to low and gradually fold in the flour mixture. Fold in the peppermint chunks.

Using a 1-1/2 inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto silpat or parchment lined baking sheets spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies are flat and surfaces are cracked, about 15 minutes. Cookies should be soft. Let cool on parchment lined wire racks to prevent sticking.

Cookies can be stored between parchment layers in an airtight container. Best if eaten within 3 days, or frozen.

Yields 2 to 2.5 dozen cookies. 

Pretzel Chocolate Toffee Cookies
Dan Craven

2-½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1/2 to 3/4 cup toffee bits (such as Skor baking pieces)

1 cup roughly chopped pretzel chunks

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients and set aside. In mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter till light and creamy. Add sugars and beat until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add dry ingredients ¼ cup at a time until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips, toffee bits and pretzel chunks. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto Silpat lined baking sheet.

Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Yield 4-dozen cookies. 

With our house full of friends old and new, I also made a big batch of Aztec Hot Chocolate. This was pretty much milk & cream based, with spices and some chopped-melted chocolate to the simmering milk.

Lastly I made a big pitcher of Cranberry Shrub. Holly and I both like Cranberry Shrub, and it stems to our time we spend in Williamsburg, VA. We honeymooned there, as well as spending our 10th Anniversary there. Many of the traditional tavern recipes can be enjoyed in King's Arms Tavern, or Christiana Campbell's Tavern to name a few. Cranberry Shrub traditionally is spiked with your liquor of choice, but we typically make it alcohol free. It's a very tart & refreshing combination of 100% juices and lots and lots of fresh lime juice. It was a fun new tradition to start and we look forward to doing this in the years to come.

Traditions!

Well, it was better late than never this year. Dan and I usually go see the Bellevue Botanical Lights display every Christmas, this year it ended up being a New Years Eve activity. It was COLD, but fun as always to see the fun flowers, animals and insects created out of lights.







One of the upsides of doing this later this year is it really wasn't super crowded.







And bonus the weather may have been cold, but at least it wasn't raining!







I did have a bit of an episode using the restroom though, there were some pushy moms trying to get their little ones front in line but I wasn't going to have any of that! I had to "school" a few people on etiquette for waiting in line for 2 bathrooms. I'm pregnant, it's okay to be extra grouchy right?







The new two new cool things this year were the vertical lights in the trees simulating rain and then there was a dragon that had smoke coming out of its nostrils.



It's a fun tradition, one that I can't wait to take our son to.

Merry Christmas 2011

This year was a different year for us. Usually we go to visit our family out of state, but this year since I would be 34 weeks on Christmas we decided it would be cutting it a bit too close to travel. So, instead we shopped and shipped our Christmas presents to family and had the great opportunity to have my sister Linda and her daughter Amanda spend Christmas with us.

We decked out house out for the season as usual. It always makes me smile to see all our decorations out, especially the nativity, which we added the wise men to this year. I love all our white cut out candle holders and the spider on our tree from Dan's mom.





We also had out our various tins and cookie jars, Williamsburg pineapples, and new this year a pomegranate from Greece.






Christmas Eve was a little hard for Dan and I this year. We both had a bit of a cry fest missing our families, listening to Christmas music and calling to talk to everyone made us feel a bit better :) Then Linda and Amanda arrived and we headed over to our friends house for a wonderful dinner and acting out of the Nativity story. I enjoyed being around friends, family, and even a few little kids. After dinner we went home and watched movies and put out our gifts to each other. Quite a haul!





Santa came and filled our stockings and left us a few things! Looks like we were good kids this year :)





We woke up and had breakfast, Dan made yummy pancakes, roasted potatoes and chicken sausage with fruit and juice. It was just what I needed.



We opened gifts, and were totally spoiled this year (as usual!). Here's my loot:





Dan's loot:




We both got ornaments from Santa. Mine was the elephant with a peanut on his nose, Dan's was a copper pan.



Santa also left us some Christmas books to add to our future advent collection. We hope to have 25 books to wrap and open with our son the month of December as a new family tradition. We're off to a good start in the collection.



New decorations put out, plus me posing with my FAVORITE gift of all, and 11 lb tub of Nutella :)




To top off a wonderful day we opened gifts from Dan's family and found the candy cane pillow case Dan had as a child, a fun blanket sewn from fabric found in Sherry's sewing room, a silver baby spoon, and a traditional tin that held homemade candy that Dan remembers from his childhood as well. We also got the story of the Elf on the Shelf, which apparently is pretty popular now, but the idea was from back in the 60's. The modern elf was removed from the box and replaced with a Sherry creation. She made a ton of little elves that hung in garland to decorate the home, and would sometimes see the elf hiding elsewhere in the home checking in on the kids to report back to Santa. These fun traditions and memories brought tears of joy to our eyes.




Finally we had so much food and candy that day it was crazy! I've eaten myself sick the past few weeks and wanted to see if I could still see my feet...I can, but just barely :)