Easy to Make Sinus and Allergy Shower Discs

I'm participating in two more swaps. The next one is a Sip, Swap, and Snack, Homemade Edition. Nobody knows what people are going to be swapping but it has to be homemade. I got this idea from the last swap I did, the Crunchy Body Swap. Someone made some citrus shower discs and I thought I should make some but would gear them toward sinuses and allergies since Fall and Winter will be here before we know it. I decided to make mini discs and ended up making 72. I wanted to have enough for 20 women to get 3 each and have some left over. Some will probably break as you're getting them out of the liners. I think I lost 4 of the 72. I'm not sure how many ladies will be participating in this upcoming swap as the last day to commit is this Friday. However, being as pregnant as I am, I had to get this done.

Here's how you make these awesome discs! I made two kinds. One geared toward adults and one geared toward kids age 2-10. You can basically add any combination of essential oils you want, as long as they are considered safe for who ever will be using the discs. In the main disc, I used Eucalyptus, lavender, and cedarwood, which are all good at helping with allergies and sinuses. In the kid safe version, I used a a KidSafe blend*.

Allergy Shower Discs 
a knock-off of Vick's Shower Tablets

2 cups baking soda
2/3 cups of water
pure Eucalyptus essential oil (not recommended for children under 10)
pure Lavendar essential oil
pure Cedarwood essential oil
foil mini muffin liners
mini muffin pan
food coloring, optional

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your mini muffin pan with foil cupcake liners. Then mix the baking soda and water, it should be a thick paste. Add food coloring if you want. Fill each muffin liner halfway with the baking soda mix, add 2-3 drops of each essential oil, then add more baking soda mix on top. Then bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool completely. Then carefully remove the discs from the liners. Add another 2-3 drops of essential oil to each disc. Let dry and wrap individually in plastic wrap. Store in a sealed container. I put these in snack size baggies, since I always have plenty of those, and will add a label to each one. I put three per bag.

*To make it kid friendly, avoid Eucalyptus essential oil. I used Plant Therapy's KidSafe, Sniffle Stopper. I also added a few drops of green food coloring to the mix so we could easily tell the difference.

Another good combination would be peppermint, lavender, and lemon. However, since I'm about to have another baby, I'm going to avoid peppermint essential oil since I'll be breastfeeding.

Kiwi Crate Review - Spheres and Their Peers

I have wanted to try Kiwi Crate for the past few years but honestly didn't want to spend the money on a monthly subscription and enjoy searching Pinterest and finding our own creative projects. Recently I caved and decided to try it. Our first box arrived about two weeks ago and had two activities to go along with the theme, Spheres and Their Peers. We made 3D bubbles and a Tangram game. A few things I really loved about the box was, (1) everything was truly included; and (2) Blue Rock could do everything pretty much by himself with some supervision from me. He's six and has done a lot of crafts and experiments so he's familiar with making things. 

Here's what we got in the box.

This is a picture of everything in the box!

The first activity we did was make the 3D bubbles. There was a book about spheres and their peers we read. Then he took the pipe cleaners and straws and made some 3D bubble wands. He mixed the solution in a big bowl and we took it outside to blow bubbles. Princess helped as well and loved dipping the wands in the bubble mixture. It didn't work as well as we had hoped. We also found out the smaller wands worked better than the bigger ones. It took about 20 minutes to put together and they played with it about 5 minutes before getting frustrated that the mixture wasn't great. Although he did have fun putting it together. We also left the bubble solution outside for a week and Blue Rock would pick it up and try and blow bubbles every time he went outside. So it wasn't that he wasn't interested in it, it was just frustrating to get it to work how we had hoped.

What was included in the 3D bubble shapes

Making some bubble wands

Mixing the solution

Blowing bubbles!

We also made sculptures with marshmallows and toothpicks. I have wanted to do this activity for a while as well but never got around to it. When I saw the theme of our Kiwi Crate I decided it would be fun to do around snack time. This was not included in the Kiwi Crate box but was simple to do, buy some marshmallows and toothpicks and have your kids create things.

Marshmallow sculptures

The other project in the Kiwi Crate was making your own Tangram game. He's been doing tangram puzzles since he was two so I thought he'd like this project. It included some paper to cut out two 3D shapes and wooden shapes to color and dye to make a game. 

Caden liked cutting the shapes out and making the cube and pyramid as well as coloring and dying the wooden shapes but he didn't really care to play the game much. I'll probably keep it a little longer and see if he gains any interest in it before tossing it.

Tangram Game

Cutting out the 3D shapes

Making designs with the white crayon before dying them

Dying the first few shapes blue

Colored Tangram shapes

Overall the kit was cute and we'll probably get a few more. It makes doing a craft with your child(ren) very easy. Caden also loved getting a box in the mail just for him!

Hot/Cold Rice Hand and Neck Packs

I finally got a sewing machine that I can use! My grandmother gave me a Singer Feather Weight 12 years ago but I never got the hang of using it. For Christmas this year, my husband bought me one. I got a Brother CS6000i sewing machine. I love it! My first project was making some hot/cold hand and neck warmers for Christmas gifts. Over the course of 3 days, I made 6 neck warmers and 9 hand warmer sets of 2. Here is a picture of a few of them. I made some in a few other colors but forgot to take a picture before giving them away.

This was a great first sewing project. I'm just learning how to use a sewing machine and I thought these gifts would be personal and useful. To make them, I cut cotton fabric at the length I wanted for the neck warmers and the length I wanted for the hand warmers. I also cut flannel to line the inside of the warmers. I sewed them inside out like you would a pillow. Then I turned them right-side out and filled them with rice. Then I sewed the end up. To use, you heat the neck warmers in the microwave for 1 minute. For the hand warmers heat for about 20-30 seconds. You can also put these in the freezer in the summer to cool you down. I loved my first sewing project and hope you do too!