I have made it a personal goal to be a more present mother. To me that means putting down the phone, letting go of some control, and embracing a little mess if it means making memories. This is what led me to finally say “Yes!” to try out two fun activities this past weekend. We tried our hands at the Jet-Puffed Hot Cocoa Bomb Kit and jumped in Gelli Baff Slime. Were they worth the mess? Here are my thoughts on them both.

To start off, Jet Puffed Hot Cocoa Bomb Kit was about $12 and the kit makes 12 fair-sized cocoa bombs which I found reasonable. Up until now, I had never tried making my own cocoa bombs because they seemed a bit complex so I’m glad we gave this kit a try. The kit provided us we everything we needed for 12 bombs even when I thought we were going to run out of chocolate, and the instructions were straightforward. We definitely feel confident that we could make them again!

My favorite part of the kit was the huge bottle of Jet Puffed mini marshmallows meant to fill the bombs as well as decorate with. Yes, they are just like the mini marshmallows in kids cereals and we could not stop eating them. This kit definitely requires oversight by an adult but I was pretty impressed seeing my daughter carefully pull chocolate shells from the mold without breaking a single one. And if you do break any (like I did) you can just melt it down and try again. We had to be extra and pulled out our own collections of sprinkles, but once we were down decorating, the final results were adorable! The only drawback is the actual hot cocoa came out very mild. Next time, I would like to add some additional cocoa powder to the bomb for a smoother hot chocolate.

Zoe has been begging me to Gelli Baff for weeks. I kept imaging it would be like slime- the bane of existence and plague of carpets or anything fabric I love in my house. After actually reading the box though, I decided to give it a try and see if the clean-up process was truly as simple as they claimed. The product comes with 2 servings of Gelli Baff and claims it will make a jelly-like Slime in a small amount of bathwater that is fun, safe, not toxic, and easy to clean. We filled the tub up just about 2” of water and added the green powder. After stirring, we let the mixture sit and saw the thin water solidify almost instantly. Together, we dug through the bath-water-now-turned- muck, just laughing at the oddity of it. We then added a bit more water as instructed which gave it a smoother, slimier texture before my daughter jumped in to play. She had a blast and her attention was held for maybe an hour before reckoning was finally near. The clean-up process started by adding Step Two, a white powder that was to be mixed in the slime and resulted with it once again becoming more of a liquid. There was still some spotty, Slime texture to the water, but once I removed the drain and splashed some cold water down the tub, Gelli Baff was gone! Pleasantly surprised by the level of fun we received as well and the simplicity of clean-up.