{Homemade Playdough!}

Today we took some time to make some homemade play dough. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but now that we live in an apartment that has purple carpet (I thought black was bad...I assure you, purple is worse) and that purple carpet does not belong to us, I recognized that store bought Play-Doh was simply out of the question, even if I was feeling lazy. (Have you ever tried to remove that stuff from anything once it has dried??)


There are a couple of reasons I like the idea of homemade play dough better than the name-brand stuff:
1) Easier to clean up
2) Edible, in case my kids give it a try
3) No strange chemicals or preservatives like you'll find in the store-bought variety
4) Making it is half the FUN!
5) No wasteful/non-biodegradable plastic containers for each color of dough

So Squirrel and I made ourselves some play dough while Little Bird napped.

The recipe we used was as follows:

Home Made Play Dough
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt (we used Kosher salt because it's all I keep here, but it worked fine!)
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp oil
1 cup water
1 package Kool-Aid {we used lemon lime (green), cherry (red), lemon (yellow), blue raspberry (blue)}
***Just an FYI in case you are like the Mister, and have never bought it--cream of tartar is actually a powder, located by the spices, and not a sauce for dipping fish in!***

Make sure to look insane/slightly evil when gathering your ingredients...

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium sauce pan. Then mix the water and oil together in a measuring cup. Place dry ingredients on stove at medium heat. Add water/oil and stir continuously until a ball forms. {It really will happen. It will get lumpy first. The first attempt got me a little frustrated because it was getting lumpy and I was trying to beat the lumps out, but then like magic everything smoothed out and I had a perfect mound of play dough--cool!}

 

 Next, knead the dough until cool enough to touch/play. (Or, let your toddler pound the life out of it with two wooden spoons until cool enough to touch/play.)

One other added benefit to this version of play dough--it smells so yummy! Instead of that strange commercial smell {okay, I admit it...I actually love the smell of name-brand Play-Doh, as weird as it is, but I digress}, these play doughs actually smell like the flavor of Kool-Aid you use.

{Sniiiiff!}

 

Once you have gathered, stirred, cooked, pounded, and sniffed, it's time to play! {I only handed over about 1/3 of each ball--any leftovers will store in the fridge in an airtight container for about 3 months.}

 

  

 {Making snakes}

  

{Little Bird wakes up and wants in on the action.}

  

  

{Notice it did not always stay as nicely separated.}

 

Overall, a very fun way to spend a morning indeed!

And hey, did I mention this stuff smells good?