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)