Homemade Playdough

Some blogs I read to read. Other blogs I just look at for the recipe, or other pertinent information, like some random delicious thing from Pintrest. Don't know you, don't care, just tell me how I can make myself and my family fatter. So here is my important information for the day.

No cook, No cream of tartar Playdough

3 cups flour

1 1/2 cups salt

1/4 cup oil

1 cup water

splash of vinegar

food coloring

Mix all the ingredients together except for the food coloring. Add more flour or water to get the right consistency. Knead until you get something playdough like. Separate the dough into portions, put a few drops on food coloring onto each portion. Knead until color is distributed.

If you don't want to get color on your hands, you can add the color to the water before you add it to your mix. But then, what is the fun in that?

I don't know if the vinegar actually does anything, but somewhere I read that it is a substitution for Cream of Tartar. What is Cream of Tartar anyways? J asked me if it was what tartar sauce is made from. I don't think it is, the only, only place I've ever seen it used is in homemade playdough. I don't think the Cream of Tartar people are sailing giant yachts around with stacks on ice.

Well, this is what it was doing today. In April. Lame.

So today I thought it was as good a day as any to get back to actually doing fun things with the boys and recording them to prove to everyone that we don't just play the wii all day.  When we were on the way home from the gym (like that?  I just throw that in there so everyone knows how buff I am), and I told the boys were would be making playdough today. J started crying because, well, I'm not sure, but he was adamant about not playing with playdough.  Once we got started he says, "Oh! Its not like regular playdough! Its cool because its different."  This was a good activity because once we did the initial making of the stuff, they kept themselves long enough for me to nurse the baby, watch the end of an HGTV show (thats the good part anyways), and drink a delicious Dr. Pepper in peace.  No one asked me for any drinks or snacks or to pull up their pants. What a nice break.  

So as we were playing, A asks, "Is it yummy?" I'm all about learning from your experience, so I figured I'd let him discover if it was yummy or not.  He took a pretty big hunk of it, stuck the whole thing in his mouth, and decided it was NOT yummy, but kept chewing and swallowed it anyways!  Weird kid.  So from then on everything he made was a "salt burrito" or a "salt christmas tree".  

I love how my kids run with things.  I generally don't have to prod them to take things to the next level (not always a good thing), and so the dinosaurs came out.  Then all the animals.  Then J wanted to make a movie of his clay.  There is an awesome iphone/ipad app called Gif Shop.  It is a super user friendly stop motion animation app that gets a lot of use in our house.  J's movie was an exploding volcano, the lava envelops the dinosaur, which turns to bones, then a scientist comes along and excavates the bones (made from cardboard) to take to his lab.  Maybe if I figure out how to post it here I will. Someday.  

Look who can't participate!

We finished off our playdough afternoon with a Pingu- clay animation- marathon from Netflix streaming, popcorn and "rootbeer" floats.  (don't tell anyone it was Dr. Pepper, they only get a little bit anyways)

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musical instrument extravaganza

No matter how many real instruments we have in our house, my oldest is always begging to "make" an instrument. Its usually rubber bands around a stacking block, but I decided to get involved and make a whole day out of it. Least complicated was the whole wax paper on the toilet paper tube kazoo, secured with a rubber band, then the dried beans or rice in paper plates stapled together (the plates we used were particularly noisy so my husband put the kibosh on those pretty quick). We got a little more complicated when we took the rubber band guitar a step further and made the floppy guitar with macaroni boxes and said rubber bands. This was the most popular for the longest amount of time. We then made a colorful glass xylophone and Jonas was really able to make some songs after I tuned it a bit. Most complicated was this flute. So complicated it took me a few days to want to get out the drill and figure it out. We had to take a trip to Home Depot for the pvc pipe, then get the energy to make the whole dern thing. Sadly, the thing that took the most effort worked the least well. The boys still have fun pretending that it makes amazing sounds. There is some tutorial on how to play it, and someone with more fluting experience might have better luck than I did, but its not about me, now is it.

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The best way to cut a watermelon

Oh summer fruit, I love you so. My favorite is watermelon. Unfortunately, I've been very unlucky with picking out a "good one". Even this one I have here wasn't very good. Once its cold though, I love it just for its texture and the memory of better tasting watermelon. But its messy and annoying to cut, but then I figured this out (I saw it on Iron Chef). I do this for big and small watermelons, cantaloupe, and honeydews.

Cut the ends off your melon so it can stand up on the cutting board and have a starting point for the next cuts .

Cut downward, cutting off all of the rind, all the way to the bottom.

Cut the melon in half. Then cut into rectangles, then squares.

The watermelon is the perfect size for eating and loving. Nothing like sitting down to watch Oprah with a big bowl of watermelon while the kids are napping (they can have some later).

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drowning in paint

We've been painting a lot. Finger paint, water colors, we even just picked up a wooden snake from the craft store on clearance that came with paints that we can paint. Our poor dining room table is all painty, but that is what it is for. Its not like we have fancy dinners on it anyways. The Queen won't be over for our hot dogs and creamy corn any time soon. But here is something more fun to do with water color paint than just your run of the mill grass and sun picture. We blew around our paints with a straw to make fun designs. The little ones can even work on their blowing skills (that is a skill, right?) J likes to get psychological and make Rorschach images out of his paintings that are blobs, so that explains the second picture.

And one more hour of summer down, thousands more to go...

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I hate planning birthday parties

Blah for June. I love my kids, but thinking of planning pin the tail on the donkey games or buying balloons makes me crazy. I don't know why it bugs me so much, but I can just guarantee that I'll get a headache that day. So I thought I'd share my cake with you. Jonas just had to have a Spongebob party this year (thanks Party City commercial). He even picked out some gross grocery store cake with popping toys on top that I actually agreed to purchasing. When it came time to order it, but I'll admit, I was dragging my feet, they didn't have the stuff for the cake and it would take too long to order. So to the internet I went. I found a site here with all kinds of crazy cakes, but one that looked simple, and you know me-I'm all about simple, and Jonas approved. So we got some yellow cake mix (because SB is yellow inside), mixed up some frosting with the standard box of colors, and got some black tubes too, put it in piping bags, and followed some pictures we printed out from the internet. The best part? I got my husband to do it. I did the hard parts- making the frosting, washing out the piping bags and whatnot, but the artistic part (which I would have done terribly) I got dear husband to do.

Is this starting to be a blog about how to get out of being crafty? I've got to get my sewing machine out and get busy...

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A mess solution

I include my husband in my brood of boys, as you might, and along with my particular man, comes with a lot of gadgets and their requisite cords and other nerdy mise en place (see x-box ear bud). Our desk drawers were brimming with stuff and if I needed to charge a camera or download photos I had to dig for 15 minutes to find the cord. I wish I could say I came up with this idea, but I didn't. We took an over the door shoe hanger and put it in our front closet. With sticky labels and a sharpie we labeled the pockets where we would put our cords and chargers. Its here on apartment therapy but I for sure had it way before this was posted, so I don't know where it came from. What I do know, is that whoever comes over to my house and sees it always wishes they had it at their house. And now you do too. My husband has taken over the front closet for his own guitar thingies. My vacuum lives in the back of the house. Poor, sad vacuum- all alone. He loves the over the door shoe hanger for all of his guitar cords and instruction booklets. Now our desk drawers are for pencils and tape, like normal people.

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Don't underestimate the power of a baby pool

Man today was hot. The whole, "You live by the beach, you get the ocean breeze" thing is totally false. First, I do NOT live by the beach. I would not ride my bike there, it would take entirely too long and I would be way too hot and sweaty by the time I got there, so no. So, there is no, I repeat, no ocean breeze. We have suffered for years without air conditioner. No one has it here. We sit with our feet in ice water, cold towels around our necks, and baby pools. Lots of baby pools. This was our first of the year, and as you can see, we didn't even stop to change into swim suits. Jonas is in his tighty whities and Asher ended up with a giant diaper under his onesie (yes, a onesie-he can't be trusted in shirt and pants, the wiener ends up on the outside too often and a pee pee mess ensues). You guys are lucky I didn't include the photo of Jonas acting like the Statue of Liberty.

Anyhoo, we rushed in from school, dumped our books on the table and started filling the pool, dusting off the spiders from the bottom. The oldest got into the sippy cup drawer for all of the toys and the little one sat right in as soon as he had his shoes off. Impromptu fun is the best kind. I got to read a magazine with my toes in the pool and they were busy for a long time. Oh, and spray sunscreen is the best. Up and Up sport sunscreen continuous spray is getting the best reviews as the safest, cheapest and most effective right now. None of the cancer causing retinyl palmitate and it goes on fast.

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