Bless your Favorite Gal Pals with Galentine’s Day Bath Bombs

It has been a crazy, busy year, and, as I keep reading articles like this one, I’m reminded that it’s been an especially difficult time for moms and working moms. I’ll confess I wasn’t very excited for Valentine’s Day this year as it’s just another holiday we’ll celebrate at home, but as it approached, I was reminded of another, equally awesome holiday I’ve always wanted to celebrate: Galentine’s Day.

If you aren’t familiar, you should stop reading this and go watch Parks and Rec, because it is literally the best show ever. You can also check out this quick explanation of Galentine’s Day, but really it’s way better if you just watch every Leslie Knope moment that exists.

I would love to gather all my dear friends in one place for an enormous Galentine’s Day breakfast, but since that isn’t possible this year, I wanted to find another way to bless my (very tired) mom friends. Here’s what I did: I made some homemade bath bombs (recipe below), packaged them with some fancy chocolate and rounded things out with a few other goodies specific to each friend. A few will go in the mail and the rest will be delivered to local friends this weekend.

Pandemic life has been crazy hard and the reality is it’s not even close to over yet. The only way we’ll get through this is by encouraging one another. Celebrating silly holidays, showing up to wave happy birthday from the driveway, reaching out when we don’t feel like we have the energy is what will get us through. So hold one another up this February 13 by blessing your own gal pals with fun Galentine’s Day treats! I guarantee you’ll brighten someone’s day.

Bath Bomb Recipe:

This is adapted from this recipe and this recipe both from Kiwi Co. The cornstarch slows the fizzing process so that the bath bomb lasts longer, but you can omit it if you want a more simple recipe. Citric acid can be found in most major grocery stores near the other canning supplies. You can also include essential oils when you add the olive oil. This recipe made about 15 bath bombs with the molds I used. Larger molds will yield less, smaller molds will yield more.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup baking soda
• 1/2 cup epsom salt
• 1/2 cup citric acid
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• food coloring (optional)
• water

First, mix together the baking soda, epsom salt, citric acid and cornstarch. 

Before adding the liquids, make sure you’re ready to stir as soon as possible. You’ll likely see some fizzing when you add any liquid to the mixture, but we don’t want things to fizz quite yet, so you’ll want to begin stirring as soon as possible after adding liquids.

Add the olive oil, mixing quickly after it’s been added. Once the olive oil is thoroughly mixed in, add food coloring (if you’re including that), mixing until it’s all combined.

Finally, you’re going to add water. I use a spray bottle for this as it allows me to add small amounts of water and reduces the fizzing a bit. You want to add water until the mixture feels like wet sand and holds a shape. You don’t want it fizzing a lot, that’s a sign that you’ve added too much water. And you don’t want it to be dry and loose, that’s a sign that you’ve added too little water. I spray a bit of water and mix everything together, than feel a bit of the mixture to see if it’s right. If not, I add more water until I have the right consistency.

Now, you’re ready to make your bath bombs into shapes. You can find a lot of different molds for bath bombs, but an easy option almost anyone will have on hand is a plastic Easter eggs or small paper cups. I used the really fun bath bomb maker that came in this Kiwi Crate for mine.

Press the mixture firmly into the mold. You’ll leave it in the mold to dry so you’ll need to have enough molds for all your mixture.

You’ll want to let your bath bombs air dry for at least 4-6 hours. I like to leave mine overnight. Then remove them from the molds and share them with your favorite gal pals!