Super Hero Soap Party Favors

I have been spending the last few weeks getting ready for my son's birthday party.  One of my seemingly more ambitious projects for the party was homemade soap.  In the end, it was pretty easy and I hope to try some more ambitious soap projects in the future.

The party will have a super hero theme so I went with superman and batman chocolate molds for the project.  I bought all of my supplies (except the molds) from Bramble Berry Soaps.  They have a great website with everything you will need to make any kind of soap.  They have great instructions and I also called them directly a few times to ask some questions before I got started and they were super nice and helpful.  I went with simple pour and melt soap.  I bought a clear base, some colors (red and blue) and I picked a grapefruit scent since I thought the kids would like something sweet.  Here is my set up before I got started:

First, I cut up some soap and melted it in the microwave.

Next, I added a little scent (a little goes a LONG way) and then the coloring.

I used a small wooden dowel to mix the ingredients, but you can use anything to mix the solution:

Next, I poured the scented and colored soap into the molds (I used some leftover red soap to plug the lollipop stick section, but you could also just tape it off).  Once the soap is poured, small bubbles sometimes form on the surface.  You can spray rubbing alcohol on the bubbles right after you pour the soap to get rid of them.  This was my favorite part...the alcohol just zapped them away:

It took the soap at least an hour or two to dry so the project took me a few nights since I only bought two molds.  You can re-heat and re-use any soap left in your glass measuring cup, so you don't have to waste any of it.  

Lastly, I packaged them in some cellophane bags and printed out labels to go along with our theme:

 All in all, a fun and easy party favor that my son is super excited about!

My Incredible Superheroes

As a mom to a three (almost four!) year-old, we talk a lot about superheros.  This year when I asked my son what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said he wanted the whole family to dress up like The Incredibles.  I thought it was a fantastic idea.  I'm not a fan of store bought Halloween costumes and I thought this was something I might be able to pull off.  My husband and I will be sporting "Incredibles" garb from the waste up, since we aren't huge fans of bodysuits with black underwear on the outside.  I purchased red shirts and thermal leggings for the boys and long sleeve shirts for me and my husband from American Apparel.  Then I purchased some yellow, orange, and black fabric as well as some fusable webbing (I'm now addicted) from the craft store.  I sketched out the incredible logos to make a template and then cut out the three shapes and ironed them together with the webbing in between each layer (I went layer by layer...not all at once).  Lastly, I ironed the whole emblem onto the shirt.  I wanted to be sure I got it right before putting it onto the shirt since there is no going back once it is on.  For my three year old, I also made the black underwear and belt.  I winged it on these pieces..snipping and trimming until it looked right.  It would probably have been easier to find some black underwear but my first few attempts were unsuccessful, so I gave up.

Tomorrow I am going to head to our local costume store to look for black masks and black gloves for us.  If I can't find a nice mask, he can always wear this one I made previously.  My son is already obsessed with his costume.  The best part is, he can wear them as PJs after halloween.  More superhero/Halloween pics to come soon!