So, you might have wondered why I fell off the face of the planet… we have ALL been sick, yep, all of us… It seems Nathan brought home a bug from school (half his class was out last Tuesday) and it has included a fever, a horrible hacking cough, faucet nose AND stuffy nose (really, both!), ear infection (just Nathan), and… it is one of those bugs that just keeps going and going. Nathan became sick LAST Friday night and he STILL has the faucet nose and is up all night coughing. He also missed school on Tuesday and Thursday of last week, poor bugger! He even took a nap today, yep, just fell asleep on the couch, and he NEVER does that! So, it has been rough… of course, I have been sick since Monday and I am not enjoying it at all, either… 🙁
I have SO many updates, there is a lot going on right now in our household, especially in March, it is always a busy month for us… I will try to get an update post up SOON!
Anyway, now that you know where we all went, let me share with you a little fun activity we did today… our second of three St. Patty’s day crafts. We made green sweet smelling playdough today (well, and red, because, SOMEONE wanted red, too… lol! You can never have enough playdough, eh?)
Let me say that this has been one of the FUNNEST activities I have done with the kids, they were just SO excited about it… especially, Nathan! This is a recipe from Highlights from last year and my mom did this with them while I was on maternity leave last year but I don’t believe I blogged about it.
Ingredients… LOTS of salt and flour…
You make a dry mix and a wet mixture that you combine on the stove. We started with the dry mix. I bought a new bag of flour and I taught Nathan how to scoop the flour into the measuring cup and to level it out with a knife. He had to do this over, and over… over… umm, yeah, several times. He loved it! He is going to make a great little cook someday!
Lots of salt. Yep, I am almost out of salt now.
Cream of Tartar. It uses a lot of that, too, I am officially out of it. But, Autumn LOVES playing with my old plastic spice bottles, so she was a happy camper about it.
The wet mix consisted of water, oil and the drink packet.
Nathan loves to stir
Love this shot!
Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture slowly and MIX constantly until it becomes the consistency of mashed potatoes
It will look like playdough when its done, and you can touch the top of it (not the part close to the pot) and if it doesn’t feel super sticky, it is done. I thought I was done with the red playdough and when I took it off the stove it was REALLY sticky still, so I cooked it up a few more minutes and it was perfect and NOT sticky to the touch.
Autumn was napping while we made the playdough, so after it cooled I rolled both colors into balls, put them in a plastic bag, twisted it and stuck them in a rubbermaid container. And, yes, they smell so good!
After Autumn woke up from her nap and the kids had lunch, I rolled out the playdough on flat mats and dumped out my 100 plastic cookie cutters so that they could go to town.
Autumn was very serious about her playdough. heheh!
Nathan just had a complete blast. He loved looking for shapes, numbers, etc.
Nathan is really excited about turning 4, so one of the first shapes he selected was a number 4.
Autumn got bored with the cookie cutters, and went onto bigger and better things (or should I say smaller? haha!). Do I need to say where this is going?
Ok, I will admit… with ‘sweet smelling’ in the name of the recipe, you have got to at least try a pinch of the stuff.
Umm, one word– SALTY. And, look at that drooly face… will her teeth ever stop coming in? She drools so much that I have to put a bib on her. She is getting her eye teeth in and its taking forever. I never remembered Nathan drooling SO much.
Out of the 100 cookie cutters, I couldn’t find any St. Pat’s ones, so I made a four leaf clover.
And of course we had to make Nathan a train.
I used some old plates and put all of the shapes on them so that they can dry. Nathan still plays with the ones he made last year that dried, and he calls them his SALTY shapes. We keep them in a plastic ziplock bag when he is not playing with them but they are quite hard. So, we’ll let these brand new salty shapes dry, too.
What fun!!!!!! One more St. Patrick’s day craft left, next weekend!! Be prepared for something sweet!
Here is the recipe:
Sweet Smelling Playdough
Drink Mix
2 tablespoons vegetable Oil
2 cups flour
1 cup of salt
4 teaspoons cream of tartar
In a bowl, mix together 2 cups of water, the drink mix, and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.
In a pot, mix together 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 4 teaspoons of cream of tartar
Slowly add the liquid to the pot. Stir.
Adult: Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it looks like mashed potatoes. Remove the dough from the pot to cool.
When the dough is cool, knead it until it’s smooth. This sweet smelling dough will last a long time if you store it in a covered container.
Roll out and cut shapes out.
