With Steve busy working on our ongoing renovations, I found myself at an unusual loose end. Given than the main work on the gite now entailed plumbing in a bathroom, it was not something I could help with. Well not if we actually wanted it to work!
Hard at work in the gite bathroom
However, I like to
be busy. I think that’s fair to say. I also like to try new things. Someone
once laughed at me and said they had never known anyone who had had so many
different jobs in their life. To date;
Exercise
jockey in a national hunt racing yard
Riding
instructress
Aldi
checkout gal (when you had to memorise ALL the prices)
Cleaner
Bar work
Classroom
assistant
Residential
social worker
Foster carer
Qualified
social worker
Singer
Author
I've always loved horses
What can
I say? I have a low boredom threshold and like new challenges and adventures.
My most recent project! My latest novel
How, in
my wildest dreams I thought that making bath bombs might be a good idea, I do
not know. For a start, I have no, and I mean NO artistic talent for this kind
of thing, whatsoever.
None.
Seriously.
None.
When my
poor children had to produce a homemade craft project for school, my stomach
would cramp into a knot and I would break out into a sweat and hide in the corner
sobbing and clutching a bottle of Chardonnay, but they always found me.
Reluctantly,
I would gather the requisite materials; paper, cardboard, glue, glitter, paint,
fairy liquid bottle, nitro glycerine etc. I would then have sleepless nights as I
worried about how utterly pathetic my little moppets’ creations would be in
comparison with the other children’s ringingly successful and startlingly
professional looking pieces, which quite frankly looked as if they had been
assembled by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. I would slink shame faced into the
classroom with my feeble, lop sided effort, which was more sellotape than anything
else, while the teachers hid behind their hands and tried not to point and
laugh.
I’m still
having therapy.
Anyway,
back to the bath bombs. I think it began when I developed an interest in
aromatherapy and the use of essential oils. For those of you that know me, I am
an all or nothing sort of person and once my interest in something is piqued, I
have to go all out to embrace it (The words “all or nothing” in this case can
be replaced by the words “particularly stupid”).
There are
no half measures for people born under the sign of Capricorn!
In the
case of the aromatherapy, it entailed buying a ridiculously large collection of
oils; not just any oils you understand, but “essential” oils. I think they call
them essential to make sure that people like me buy them; I mean, they’re
essential right?
A few of my oh so essential oils; how do you like my egg box ha ha
Many of these
oils are impossibly expensive. I appreciate that the amount of jasmine it takes
to make one drop of oil equates to the size of a small country, but really,
£8.99 for a 2ml bottle – pu-lease. That was one even I didn’t buy! Once you
have the oil of course, you have to have the carrier oil. I discovered that the
carrier oils are almost as varied as the essential oils themselves and have
wonderful tempting names such as peach kernel, and essence of avocado. So,
having added a good half dozen carrier oils to the ever growing list of
essential oils, to my basket at Amazon, I hit the “checkout” button and almost
passed out. What? What do you mean £156.98? For a few miniscule bottles of oil.
Clearly, this would not do, and so I set about pruning my basket until I felt
confident that I had avoided bankruptcy (for now).
The equally essential carrier oils
Said oils
then arrived, and I spent a delightful hour oohing and aahing and the truly marvellous
scents and almost magical properties of these unassuming little bottles.
Next of
course, I had to have a diffuser. Well naturally I did! Did you expect anything
less? In fact, I have to admit, I bought two J. These tiny
wonders of beautifulness, which change colour every few seconds, and quietly emit
a polite atomised mist of scented loveliness were quite frankly, irresistible. Really I should be on commission as, such was
my enthusiasm, I talked more than one of my friends into buying them too!
My precious light up diffuser
Then
there were the books; I needed books, and not Kindle books as you can’t flick
back and forth easily with the Kindle. Thankfully Amazon have 2nd
hand books, and so for a change, I managed to get an utter bargain in bagging 2
books for 0.01p each J Postage
however, was another matter but I managed to convince myself that the books only
cost 0.01p, as long as I ignored the postage costs.
I think it’s called ostrich
syndrome.
The more
I read about the wonders of essential oils, the more interested I became, so
much so that I looked into becoming an aromatherapist. Of course I did - remember,
no half measures! Realising however, that renovating a house, caring for a high
maintenance husband and an even higher maintenance dog, whilst at the same time
trying to write another book was possibly enough for the moment, this bright
idea had to be shelved (for now).
Instead I continued to read about all the
endless things you could do with essential oils, and one of them was to make
bath bombs.
With unfettered
excitement, I imagined the satisfaction of making my own bath bomb Christmas
gifts for friends and family. I allowed myself a moment to smile inwardly as I
pictured the amazed looks on their faces as they marvelled at my handiwork and
exclaimed at how very clever I was. I tried to push aside the more realistic
conclusion, which took me back to the pitying glances and whispered comments of
the teachers at my daughters’ school when they saw the latest offering for the
craft project.
Not one
to be deterred, and uttering the (later to be regretted) words of “How hard can
it be”? I set about Googling “How to make your own bath bombs”. Thankfully I
remembered to put the word “bath” in there, thus avoiding a raid by the French
police.
“Aha” I
said, grimacing, as I read the alarmingly long list of necessary ingredients and duly logged
back into Amazon for another round of totally unnecessary shopping. I had not
appreciated the seemingly endless components of a simple fizzy bath bomb. “WHAT? “Why do I need citric
acid? Surely anything with the word acid in it can’t be good for adding to a
bath”? I said, thinking immediately of John Haigh, the acid bath murderer.
However, it appeared, after a LOT more Googling, that citric acid was indeed a “must
have” ingredient, and so into the Amazon basket it went.
Sigh.
As well as the citric acid, you need Epsom salt, bicarbonate of soda, cornflour, food colouring,
oil (ha, got that) and essential oils (yep) and you have the basics of a bath
bomb.
Oh but
wait; how do I mould them?
More
Googling.
Aha,
clearly I need to order some bath bomb moulds as fashioning one with my bare
hands wasn’t really an option.
Finally,
all my ingredients were assembled in one place; and so to work.
To say
that my first effort was a total disaster is an understatement. I followed a
recipe from one of the many Internet sites, which had obviously been put there to
drive people like me over the edge. The amount of water was clearly excessive,
though in my inexperienced naivety I had no idea how little liquid was actually
required.
I added
the water with a kind of gung ho abandon, but before I could begin to “Whisk
until the mixture forms clumps”, it took on a life force of its own and within
seconds resembled a dangerous alien life form. It foamed and fizzed and
expanded at an alarming rate.
“This can’t
be right” I said with amazing intelligence and insight.
I tried
to ignore the extreme chemical reaction, which was taking place in front of my
eyes, along with the choking cough I had developed due to the large amount of (undoubtedly dangerous) powered elements floating about in the air. Instead I focused on the next instruction, which was, “Pick up a small
amount of the mixture and press into the mould”
I
observed the “mixture” which was way beyond the stage of forming clumps and
knew that in reality it was a lost cause. I gritted my teeth and muttered a
lot, while trying to pick some of it up, but the blasted stuff was so assured
of its own powers that it defied handling. It oozed from between my fingers and
all but laughed out loud at me.
Never one
to give up, I duly “pressed it into the mould” which had cost me a tenner plus
P&P. I swiftly clapped on the other half of the mould and held tight.
The
mixture emboldened by its success in failing, demonstrated a quite remarkable strength
as it slowly and unbelievably pushed the sides of the mould apart. I held on for a few more seconds before I
acknowledged defeat and threw the whole lot bad temperedly into the sink
accompanied by a lot of unprintable words.
I then
realised that this was not as easy as I had anticipated and did what I should
have done in the first place; I watched a You Tube tutorial.
Oh my life.
The first
one I found was astonishing in its annoyingness. A bright breezy “mom” who not
only had the perfect life in her perfect house; she also had perfect children, perfect
teeth, and could also apparently make the perfect bath bomb, while looking immaculate and making no mess whatsoever.
She brought out
the worst in me and I had to switch her off, while fighting off waves of envy and muttering,"bitch" under my breath.
Eventually,
I found a more acceptable, less irritating video, took notes and tried again.
The
results were more pleasing, but the first try wasn’t quite a success. Too much
liquid again, which meant that the bath bombs refused to leave the safety of
their moulds. Undeterred, I tried yet again. This time, I had the brainwave of
adding the liquid via a fine atomiser.
RESULT
I never
thought I would hear the words, “Yey it’s clumping” come out of my mouth, but
they did, as clump it did. I quickly stuffed it into the moulds, squished the 2
sides together and prayed it wouldn’t escape again. Nope, all seemed calm.
Tentatively, I tried removing one half of the mould …….. it came away without
argument and I found myself mocking the mixture in triumph. “Ha, not so fizzy
now are we? That showed you” and other inane comments, bourn of the lunacy this
project had evoked in me.
Project bath bomb!
My kitchen now resembled some sort of dodgy amateur cocaine factory with white powder spread across every available surface, but I had done it. I had won!
White powder all over the place!
And so
there it was, my lovely round bath bomb, which of course I shall never actually
use. I shall look at it, smell it and marvel at its loveliness.
Come on, admit it - it's good
I shall
also try to ignore the fact that it cost me approximately £134.78 to make and I
could have bought one for £2.50 in Lush!
C’est la
vie
Freya
xx
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