Burning up daylight around here with pink play-dough. This activity kept these two, two year olds busy for much longer than two minutes. Actually they enjoyed themselves for a very long time.

Homemade Play-dough

Mix together in bowl:
2  1/2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon alum (found in the spice section)
In a saucepan on the stove stir the following ingredients together.  Bring to a boil.
2 cups water
1/2 cup salt
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
food coloring (if making the whole batch the same color, otherwise knead individual colors in at the end)
(you can also use unsweetened kool-aid type drink mix packets to color and scent the dough, add in with the water)

Once mixture is boiling, add

2 -1/2 cups flour
1 Tablespoons alum

Cook over low to medium heat stirring constantly until dough comes away from the edges of the pan and it becomes very hard to stir. Remove from heat and let cool slightly(until you are able to knead the dough).

Knead until smooth and elastic. Store in an airtight container.This recipe is for a smooth dough similar to the consistency of Play-doh.

Never underestimate the lure of play-dough

It also kept these three “big” boys just in from golf very busy (and it was even pink)!

Lauren and Derek of the Curiosity Shoppe are guest posting today to help promote the Read to Feed Project! Everything you will find at their shop in San Fransisco is special. They have taken great care to fill their shop with items and ideas that will delight, amuse and inspire.  You will also find them each Wednesday at Design Sponge sharing creative and useful projects. Be sure to check them out! They will amaze you with their creativity!

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Lauren and Derek write…

These bright and colorful tissue paper flowers are inspired  by the book Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.

We love the book Ferdinand for its beautiful illustrations and wonderful story about a bull who would rather sit under a tree and smell the flowers than charge the bullfighter who is taunting him at the opposite end of the ring.

How to make Paper flowers inspired by the book Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf

Ingredients:

Colored tissue paper

Scissors

Floral wire

Floral tape

How-to:

1. For each flower you will need 3-4 squares of colored tissue paper, measuring about 5″ square. Stack up the paper and fold into quarters.

2. Cut a rounded edge with your scissors, adding little wavy scallops as you cut.

3. Bend the top of one of your pieces of floral wire into a loop and thread the opposite end through the center of your stack of tissue, pushing it all the way up the floral wire until it catches on the loop.

4. Wind a 4″ piece of floral wire around the base of the flower, making sure to catch a bit of the paper and continuing down the stem 1″-2″.

5. Gently separate the layers of tissue paper and crinkle them slightly to create the petals and give the flower some volume.

Derek Fagerstrom and Lauren Smith are the owners of the Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco and are the DIY editors at the popular design blog, design*sponge.

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Who loves flowers as much as Ferdinand? – Bees!

From India to the Dominican Republic, bees from Heifer International help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen.

Beehives require almost no space, and once established, are inexpensive to maintain. As bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants. Placed strategically, beehives can as much as double some fruit and vegetable yields. In this way, a beehive can be a boon to a whole village.

Although most Heifer partners keep bees as a supplement to family income, beekeeping can be a family’s livelihood. Your gift provides a family with a package of bees, the box and hive, and training in beekeeping.

Today we were busy baking and making. With Arnie the Doughnut by Laurie Keller as our inspiration we filled our tummies with yummy doughnuts.

We used 101 Cookbook’s recipe for baked doughnuts. They were (yes we ate the whole 1 1/2 dozen YIKES) delicious. I would like to believe they were healthy since they were baked—but they were dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar. We were able to make the entire recipe in the food processor. This makes quick time of the kneading (we counted to 45 slowly and it was done).

And so you don’t think we are only about weapons around here, we made felt doughnuts too. My eleven year old was amazing with his needle and his sister was thrilled to have some new play food.

First we cut out our felt circles. You may use our template if you like.

doughnut-template

Sew the frosting to one of the doughnut pieces.

My son then sewed “sprinkles” all over the “frosting” with embroidery thread.

With right sides together sew doughnut pieces together, leaving an opening for turning

Turn doughnut right side out.

Stitch completely around the center of the doughnut. We found this easiest to do on the sewing machine. Stay as close to the edge as possible, catching the top and bottom layers.

Stuff doughnut and slip stitch dounut closed!

Ta Da!

We hope you will consider reading along with us to Reed to Feed! This funny and superfluous story gave me pause. As we are reading and eating I am reminded of how lucky we are to have an abundance of food. We can “play” with our food. This it not the case for so many. As a world population over 800 million people will go hungry today.

To make this fun and easy marbleized paper you will need: 1/2 tsp alum (helps paint adhere to the paper), 2 cups liquid starch, liquid acrylic paints, a long wooden skewer , a 9 X 13 pan and white copy paper cut to fit the inside your pan. You can change up the size of the pan, just keep the proportions of starch and alum the same. The starch should be 1 to 2 inches deep in your pan.

Pour 2 cups of liquid starch in the pan then add 1/2 tsp alum stirring until mixed.

Gently drop acrylic paint on the surface of the starch. Some paint will sink to the bottom- do not worry. Try not to use too much paint. For best results choose light and dark colors that go together. It will take some experimenting to know how much paint works best for you. Brands of acrylic paint differ in consistency. If after several tries you have trouble with the paint not staying on the surface, try adding a drop of water to your paint.

Take the wooden skewer and drag the paint through the starch. Continue dragging the skewer through the paint until you get a design you like. You might try other tools like a fork, feather or comb besides the skewer. Really the fun of this activity is watching the paint swirl around making different designs. There is no right and wrong. Enjoy the experimenting. We were mesmerized —- we hope you will be also!

Lay your piece of paper on top of the starch. Allow it to sit for a couple of seconds.

Lift the paper out of the pan and allow the starch to drip off the paper

Rinse the paper under running water removing any extra starch. This does not change the intensity of the colors (the below photo is a different piece of paper paper from the above photo)

After the paper has been rinsed, lay it out to dry. It will take about two hours for the paper to dry. When the paper is completely dry, iron on medium setting until the sheets of paper are flat.

You may find that you can print two sheets of paper before adding more paint to the starch. In the photo below, the bottom piece of paper was made first. We then used our skewer again making a different design and put on another sheet of paper.

In the photo below we had too much paint on our starch so we went ahead and made a print then changed up the design and then made another. If you feel that you have made a lot of prints and your starch is too full of paint, just pour it out and start again.

The possibilities of what to do with your paper are endless—- cover pencils, a book or a box, make note-cards, book marks or a picture frame etc.

Have fun!

A group of friends and I share a tradition of taking our kids’ teachers lunch during teacher appreciation week. We tally up the amount of lunches we need, notify our teachers and then gather in the morning to assemble the lunches. One friend makes delicious chicken salad, another brings croissants for the sandwiches, one brings fruit, another makes wonderful pasta salad and another awesome brownies. I take care of the packaging. Last year I made these sacks. This year I made oilcloth lunch sacks.

I first made a pattern out of cardboard measuring 15 x 12. Cut a 2 1/2 inch square out of each bottom corner.

Take two pieces of oilcloth right sides together and draw around your template. Cut out. I used small clothes pins to hold the pieces together.

I used pinking shears to cut across the top (very optional- I thought it gave the edge a finished look)

Sew down each side and across the bottom. I used a stitch length of 5 and 1/4 inch seams on the entire bag. My machine handled the oilcloth beautifully, but If you have any troubles, Sew Mama Sew has a wonderful article on sewing with oilcloth.

Fold in bottom of bag bringing bottom seam and side seam together

Pin bag bottom to bag side with clips

Sew across on each side

Turn bag right side out and fold in top of bag about 1/2″ and then top stitch

Measure about 2 1/2 inches from middle side seam on all four corners, finger press, clip with clothes pins

Top-stitch closely to the corner fold on each of the four sides

Finished!