DIY Play Dough

What is it with kids and Play Dough? It can keep them busy for hours! Even my 10 year old sits there and plays with it for as long as her 7 year old brother does and sometimes longer. I’ve never liked buying play dough because I didn’t think the price and the size of the play dough you got, matched up lol, not to mention it always got mixed with other colors or it dried out. I have recently changed my mind because I found a recipe here on, How Does She? for me to make it on my own! Now that I can do! It cost WAAY less money and you get a heck of a lot more and we get to have fun picking our own colors and making it together :D SO I made sure I had all the ingredients, which I didn’t (I’ve never even heard of Cream of Tartar lol), I finally got the stuff we needed and got to it! It was SSOO easy! Even easier than the Salt Dough, this is kinda weird considering salt dough only takes 3 ingredients...

So here is what you need….

1 cup flour

1 cup water

¼ cup salt

1 tbls vegetable oil

2 tsp cream of tartar

& your choice of food coloring

Now throw it all in a pot and mix it real well, 

cook it over medium heat, stirring constantly until it forms into a ball or a big clump,

Place on wax paper and let it cool. When cooled knead until it’s smooth and soft. I had my kids knead the dough while I started a new batch and color. Some of us (Kiarrah) got really into kneading, face expressions and all :)

The first batch we made got dug into right away. Cookie cutters, butter knives, rolling pins… the works. I was very excited to see them enjoying something that I made for them. On the other hand, our second batch wasn’t so loved at first. Kiarrah helped me make all 5 (yellow, lime green, black, red and dark blue) BUT when they were finished and ready to be played with she was over it lol. Gabriel was playing a pizza-math game on the computer and only stopped long enough to come watch me make the black play dough (we were all excited for that one). So I put them in their containers and there they still sit :) My kiddos did say that they were gonna play with it all morning LOL.

<3 Rae 

Turkey craft

Wow! I can’t believe I forgot about the turkeys that we made, I wanted to share them but spaced it. So here I am!!! yay!! :)

I found the turkey idea (here) 

 and since I had so many tp rolls left over from the bird feeders, I knew this had to be the next project.

Let’s get to it……

Here’s what you need; tp rolls, colored construction paper, pencil, scissors, glue, googly eyes (we drew ours on) and your kids :D

1)   the first thing we did was pick out the colors that we wanted for Turkey’s feathers (Red, Orange, brown and yellow),

2)   Then we traced our hands on the paper, cut them out and set them aside for later.

3)   The next thing we did was color on their eyes and cut out a little beak for Turkey ( cut a v shape on your tp roll and fold up to make his beak)   *while the kids were busy doing that I was drawing and cutting  out their feet and gobbles (gobbles- you know the little thing that hangs from their necks, lol)

4)   Next we glued on turkeys feet and gobble

5)   finally, decide what color order you want his feathers to go and start gluing them on to the back of your turkey

6)   Now you and your kids can admire your thanksgiving turkeys!!! :D

We got a little more creative than the original one we saw by adding the feet (turkeys gotta have feet, how will they walk?). We also did one where instead of using our traced hands, we cut out feathers with crazy scissors to make the feathers look, well, crazy :) And since my kids are so nice they wanted to make one for their teachers and their schools office! I thought it would be cute for them to write Thankfuls on the back of their feathers so that’s exactly what we did. For their school they wrote “I’m thankful for Mariana”, on their teachers they wrote “I’m thankful for mrs…and their teachers name!! How sweet!

<3 Rae

Pumpkin Muffins

I’ve been on a Holiday frenzy lately, looking up all kinds of fun Holiday crafts for my kids to decorate our house with and yummy recipes to make our house smell good and our belly’s full. I’ve been getting most of my ideas from Pinterest, LOVE that site!!

A recipe I thought would be yummy was the Pumpkin Muffin that I found (HERE). I wanted to use pumpkin but not in a pie, too traditional. So this one was perfect because its muffins :D and you only need TWO ingredients!!! YES you read that right! It’s SO EASY!! My Daughter made them all by herself :D

So here is what you’ll need...

<3 1 can of pumpkin 15oz

<3 1 box of cake mix (I used yellow cake mix) (you DON’T need the egg, water or oil, JUST the MIX by itself)

 Put cake mix and pumpkin in bowl and mix real good…

 Spoon muffin mix in cupcake wrappers and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes…

 

When they are done you will have some yummy moist muffins with a taste of pumpkin. Top with powdered sugar or a dab of whipped cream. YUM!! Let me know if you make them and like them.

<3 Rae

Bird Snacks

I need to stock up on craft supplies! Anything that will keep the kids busy is my friend. Yesterday as I’m cleaning the kitchen, (for the second time of the day,) my Son got this huge spark of energy. It was too cold to shoo him outside and he kept asking to throw bird seeds outside SO, I decided to have him make some bird feeders. Thank goodness too because he was driving me bananas! LOL.

Last year we made some Bird Feeders out of Pine cones, Peanut Butter and Birdseed's...

They worked but Lordy were they MESSY!! It was so hard to roll them in birdseed's and to hang them from string and I think the birds either carried them away or they fell and our dog Bella got them. Bella LOVES peanut butter (she’s been sniffing at our new bird feeders since we put them up).

So as I said last year we made some using Pine cones, this year we did them differently. I saw the new-easier kind on this Blog (HERE) and thought to myself “GENIUS” “why didn’t I think of that?” In her version she used Toilet Paper rolls (I’ve been saving every roll since then)!! WOW, so much better, they’re easier to hold than the pine cones and instead of tying them to the tree, you can just slide them on to the branch! DUH!! I don’t know why I didn’t think about that! I’m just happy we found an easier way; I’m so easy to please ;)

Here are some pictures of Gabriel making some and the steps. Enjoy :)

 First we got an empty toilet paper roll and spread peanut butter all over it...

 The we spread birdseed all over our cutting broad...

 And rolled the peanut buttered toilet paper roll on the birdseed trying to get it as even as possible...

And then your DONE! And the birdies have a treat :) Now find a good branch to put them on...

I've been looking out for birds but still haven't been able to catch a picture of one.

      <3 Rae

Salt Dough Ghosts and T-Shirt Scarfs

   I haven’t been here in a week or so and I missed it :) I was sick for a little while there, I'm getting better now so, here I am.  

    Ive recently became obsessed with the website Pinterest. com. On this website I have found a million cool things!!!! So many ideas for parties, hair, decorating, you name it. My favorite is the DIY & Crafts, it has so many fun projects.

   The kids favorite is the Salt Dough!!! I first saw it (HERE) and it was for Salt Dough Ghosts,

which we made! I gotta tell you, its SO easy!! But MESSY!! Well at least so far it is. Ive made it twice, so im still trying to find my groove with it. We did somethings different from the recipe. I cut all the measurements in half because I wasnt sure how much it would make (then I noticed we were low on salt so half was perfect), we died the dough with food coloring instead of painting them. We weren’t that smart though and just put the food coloring in each little ghost, mixed him up and then formed him back into a ghost. Later I found out that you should put the drops of color in the WATER and BEFORE you mix all the ingredients together HAHAHA! Our way worked too but on try number 2, we did it the right way and our hands stayed tan :) No matter what, we had fun and that’s really what counts.Heres a few pics of our Ghosts...

      They came out a little brown :( we loved them anyway :D

   Now, My favorite is the T-Shirt Scarf :) I fist saw it (HERE) 

 but then I found this one (HERE) 

 and I think its better. I love this because you can use any shirt that you don’t mind cutting up and there is no sewing involved at all and all you need is t-shirts in any colors you want and scissors. I made one the same night I found it. Kiarrah made one the next day after seeing mine and then I made two more :D  With my first one, I should’ve made my circles smaller so that my scarf would have been tighter, lesson learned :) Now with the last two I made I didn’t use a t-shirt I used some really old ribbed tank tops that I had. And because it wasn’t a t-shirt the strips of shirt didn’t curl in like they are supposed to and they circles ended up being smaller which led to a smaller scarf. Perfect for the kiddos :D They ended up being warmer and looking better all together. 

    See i think the circles should be closer, oh well next time :)

    Love it :) i was so proud! Kiarrah couldn't wait to do one :D

    Proud Girl :D

      Heres the ribbed tank ones, i love them, im gonna try to make one for me but im gonna need more tanks first

     Jr modeling his :D

     Juice modeling hers :D

We had a lot of fun making them and theyve worn them everyday, ive put them in the washer and they made it out fine, i kept them out of the dryer though just in case ;) I hope you liked em! <3 Rae

For the recipe for the salt dough and more salt dough ideas here are the links…

* Salt Dough Thanksgiving Turkeys 

* Salt Dough Festive Leafs 

* Salt Dough Crhistmas Ornaments  

* Salt Dough Dinosaur Fossils 

* Salt Dough Necklace  

For the T-Shirt Scarf tutorial and other t-shirt tutorials here are the links…

* Braided Scarf tutorial 

* Infinity T-shirt Scarf

* Ringlet T-Shirt Scarf

* Paper Plate T-shirt Scarf

* T-shirt rug tutorial

* No sew T-shirt Vest

* T-shirt Bag