Party favors for a baby shower

Since we covered the actual baby shower yesterday, let’s talk baby shower party favors. My initial idea was to find miniature baby bottles, glue a ribbon around them, and fill them with candy. Easy and cute! But finding bottles proved to be much more of a challenge than I anticipated. Using actual baby bottles would’ve been more expensive than I preferred, and I couldn’t find the right size of bottles I wanted. I found some on Amazon in bulk and ordered them based off the picture, but when they arrived they were much too small – more like play baby bottles for kids! I scoured craft stores and dollar stores but to no avail, so I scrapped the idea and went for these instead.

Martha's, not mine!

Pinterest introduced me to these cute bath fizzies housed in mini mason jars, courtesy of Martha Stewart. I thought these would be perfect because, a) They aren’t bad for you, unlike candy; b) They make cute decorations for the shower; c) Even if no one uses them, they look cute anyway! Plus you get a mason jar.

Making the fizzies was easier than I thought it would be, though I do recommend watching the instructional video on her site and not just using the written directions. I recommend this for a couple of reasons:

• It’s funny to watch Martha interact with the underlings

• The instructions in the video directly contradict the instructions written on her website. For example, the site says that the mixture should become damp but not fizzy, while the video shows Martha and her assistants spraying the mixture and saying things like, “Watch it fizz! Spray it some more!” I’m paraphrasing but you get the picture – completely contradictory.

I used two types of molds for my fizzies: heart-shaped ice cube trays and plastic candy molds. Both worked very well for this project but the fizzies popped out easier from the candy molds rather than the ice cube trays. I had to be more delicate and patient while removing the fizzies from the ice cube trays or I’d crush them.

The heart-shaped ice cube trays -- I went a little lighter on the
blue food coloring than I should have.

The mold on the left is for chocolate truffles and the one on the
right is for peanut butter cups (or something similar).

The process is pretty straightforward: combine the ingredients, moisten them, pack into the molds and let dry overnight, and pop them out and put them into the jars. Easy! I scented mine with lavender essential oil and the apartment smelled like we’d been lavender-bombed. Seriously, it was STRONG. Then I ran the ice cube trays through the dishwasher and everything ELSE smelled like lavender.We may as well have had lavender-scented dish soap! I thought it was lovely but Mark thought it was a bit much.

Here is an almost-finished jar, accented with ribbon:

You can kind of see how the fizzy is shaped like a peanut
butter cup.

And here is a box of them with their "labels" I made from scrapbook paper and a 1-1/2 inch circular paper punch:

I was so happy they turned out! I felt like this was a project that could've been doomed to fail but they made it out just fine. Granted, I DID start two weeks in advance because projects like these inevitably take a much longer time to finish than you anticipate (especially for me) and this was no different. So here's to saying NO to procrastinating and YES to Martha Stewart!

Tackled any crafty projects lately?