Quarantine!

So far we've managed not to resort to congaing round the house chanting "We've got cabin fever", but we do have a rather fed-up little girl.
 Fortunately we've managed to come up with a few quarantine and chickenpox themed activities to take the sting, if not the itch, out of her imprisonment.
 The most important thing, in a quarantine, is to make sure that nobody gets in or out, so to assist with that we made ourselves some quarantine flags and stuck them up all around the house (with accompanying notes just in case our visitors, for some reason, can't read flag-code).

Fun With Flags

The next thing, of course, is to treat the afflicted.
  Home-made penicillin might be all too easy to produce in our kitchen* but, alas, penicillin is of no use against the chickenpox virus, so we settled for treating the most noticeable symptoms with some home-made bath bombs.
 The recipe for these is surprisingly easy and doesn't require anything you aren't likely to have lying around the house anyway.
As long as you bake, drink chamomile tea** and use essential oils that is.

First, assemble your ingredients: bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar (about a quarter as much as the bicarb), a cup of cold chamomile tea (or plain water), a chamomile tea bag or other dried flowers or herbs, some essential oil (we used lavender for its soothing properties) and any carrier oil, olive is fine.

Mix the bicarb and cream of tartar thoroughly, if you want to add any chamomile -or other flowers- then tear open the bag and mix them into the combined powders.

Then add the essential oil, using anything from ten to twenty drops depending on strength, more if you're making a huge amount of bath bombs, and mix quickly before it starts to foam.

Add the olive, or other carrier, oil and mix again, quickly.

Now add just enough of the cooled chamomile tea or water to make the mixture stick together when squeezed.
A plant mister can help with this stage: you want to add as little as possible (we used less than an egg-cup full) so spritz or sprinkle gently and again mix quickly to avoid setting off a reaction.

Finally squidge the mixture into moulds using whatever you have at hand, we used an egg carton but you could also use teacups, those capsules from the inside of kinder eggs, or pretty much anything.
Leave it to dry for about four hours, then tap the bombs gently out ready to use.

The lavender and chamomile mixture is wonderfully soothing and smells lovely.


*Joke! Joke! Do not alert social services! My kitchen is really pretty clean.
Comparatively clean anyway.

**Confession: I do not drink chamomile tea, this is because it tastes like cat-pee smells, it is very useful for soaking home-made baby wipes though.

Yes, I am a tremendous hippy.