Rainy Day Fun!

What are two girls supposed to do on a gloomy, rainy, yucky day besides hang out in their pajamas all day? Make play dough!!! Cupcake has never played with play dough and I've never made it, so I was worried that this would be a fail, but alas it was a success!!! We found an easy recipe for homemade dough and we were on a mission! I was a bit nervous because they recipe called for Cream of Tartar and I thought I had some in the pantry, but I wasn't positive. Luckily after digging to the bottom of my spice jars I found it!! So here's what we did:

In a saucepan we combined 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, 1/4 salt, 2 tsp cream of tartar and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil. We added a squirt of gel food coloring and mixed. Cupcake had fun mixing (though she kept trying to take the spoon out of the pan and eat it or hit me with it or put it in the flour jar). I then headed over to the stove and warmed it on medium, stirring constantly. Eventually it thickened up until it stuck to my spoon. I then kneaded it for a bit and let it cool. And moved on to the next color! It was THAT easy!!! I had purchased these little plastic containers from the dollar store (6 for $1) specifically for this purpose and they work great!

 

At first she was  quite confused as to what to do with the dough, but with a little demonstration from momma she was ready to dive in!  I have some not often used cookie cutters that I dug out of the basement and some plastic utensils so she had something to cut the dough with.  I'm going to have to find her a mini rolling pin for future play.  And there will be lots more play with this stuff!  It was super easy to make and she had a blast.  She's not that great with the knife (she's only 20 months!!!), but she figured the cookie cutters out real quick!

You could also add glitter into the mix if you want sparkly dough or you could use Kool-Aid for the color and it would likely be scented.  I didn't want to make it smell good, though, as I didn't want to encourage her to eat it (although the lack of good smell didn't stop her from trying!).  So, I declare this adventure a success (minus the part where Oscar snatched some off the table and ate it!) and we will definitely have more play dough fun soon.