Crafty little things Kids

Sunday, 8.30am, cold but dry (view from kitchen window)

In anticipation of  two cold and rainy days ahead I had a few craft activities hiding in the weekend wings.  Friday afternoon we made play-dough, for the very first time!  Up until now we have always had a steadly supply of the 'shop' stuff that has come our way on various birthdays and christmas, but that's now gone all hard and crunchy (despite being stored in the tubes?) so we decided to give the homemade version a go.
We used the following recipe which worked really well, but there seems to be lots of variations possible:-
2 tbs alun
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tbs oil
food colouring
Put dry ingredients into bowl and stir.  Mix water, oil and food colour together and pour into dry ingredients.
Mix/knead together for 4 mins (or 30 seconds in our case, but as they were going to play with it straight afterwars I figured this was the equivalent of kneading)

We tryed doing autumn colours but, whilst the colours when mixed in the water/oil solution looked exactly as we wanted, they became very 'bland' when mixed into a dough.  By this time the boys creative juices were flowing and I didn't think they'd appreciated a pause whilst I adjusted my colour palette, so I just left them as they were.  Next time I'll be sure to go heavy handed on food colouring, I mean it not as if they are going to eat it - well not all of it anyway!
We also tryed adding spices - cinammon and ginger - to the dough but that didn't work to well either.  Apparently essensial oils are the answer!

This occupied them for a while, quite a while actually, but there are limits to everything - so on to the 'painting workshop'. 
We soon have a very long car journey (all of 5 hours!!) ahead of us so I though i'd try and make it a bit more interesting for them and less noisy for us!   I bought two wooden 'attaché' cases and gave them to the boys to decorate.  For some reason Rémi chose to embelish his with the flag of Burundi , and Tino did a sort of 'rainbow' thing.

Now it's up to me to fill them with fun games, activites, snacks and supplies for the 'road-trip'. To be continued...

Nothing like a little fresh air are to re-fuel 'craftly' little minds

This was only our '500th' visit to the helicopter landing pad!

And tomorrow Tino will be 3!!! so I enlisted the help of the chaps to make his school birthday cake; he will be having a little party on wednesday afternoon.

Then at last it was time for bath, dinner and FINALLY bed!! but not forgetting 'The night before the Birthday':-

When I have said my evening prayer,
And my clothes are folded on the chair,
And Mother switches off the light,
I'll still be 2 years old tonight,

But from the very break of day,

Before the children rise and play,

Before the darkness turns to gold,

Tomorrow, I'll be 3 years old,

3 kisses when I wake,

3 candles on my cake!

(Festivals Family and Food - Diana Carey, Judy Large)