Balloons that POP

It's a little past Valentine's Day but I just had to do a quick post about some fun Valentines! This was our first experience needing to have Valentine's for a child's whole class. Elliott needed to give some out to his little friends at preschool and so the big decision was...to make...or buy?

Only one person in his class made their own - the rest were all store-bought. So were Elliott's. BUT his were just so fun I couldn't resist them!

I was at the Dollar Store in early January trying to buy some little gifts to put in the kids' mailboxes while we were in Hawaii. The Valentine's Day stuff had just been put out and I saw these crazy looking V-day pouches that said they held self-inflating balloons. I bought one set to try out...and sure enough...they were cool!

So, I went back and bought enough for his whole class. Here's what they do...
First you take one of these little pouches and put it flat on the table. Then you hit it...really hard with your fist!

The bag starts to puff up and you hear the sound of the wrapper tearing.

The balloon inside the package is filled with baking soda and citric acid that mix together and 'explode' when you hit it.
Then...poof...a balloon comes flying (like...almost to the ceiling) out! How fun is that?

All you can see in the picture above is the empty wrapper - while the balloon had shot across the room. I tried half a dozen times to get a picture of one popping but it caught me off guard every time. (and I may or may not have screamed every time it popped)

To our family...we wanted to send you some Valentines in the mail but didn't think these would travel well. I think they'd pop in the mailbag and give a poor mail carrier quite a shock! Plus, being that they were from the very high-quality experts from the Dollar Store...a quarter of them were duds and didn't pop through the wrapper. Boo.

Fun nonetheless.

In other randomness...Henry loves his sisters. :)