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We have been meaning to make homemade play doh for over a year….and now that I know just how easy it is, and how good it turned out, I wish we’d gotten around to making it sooner. 

There are literally dozens of recipes on the internet and I’m not sure why I chose this particular one (or where I got it), but it turned out fantastic and it is the recipe I’ll stick to.

You’ll need..

2 Cups Flour

1 Cup Salt

2 Cups Water

4 Tbsp. Oil

4 Tbsp. Cream of Tartar (found in the spice aisle)

TIP  Add Peppermint Extract to help preserve the play doh and give it a great scent. 

 Mix all the ingredients together in a large pot.

Cook over medium heat about 5 minutes.  It will start to clump as you can see in the above photo.

Then it almost instantly all clumps together and looks like this.

At this point it is really soft and smooth and can be picked up and put on wax paper and kneaded and split into 3 or 4 balls depending on how many different colors you want to make.

Add several drops of food coloring and let the kids have fun mixing it in.

Then it’s playtime.

 And a picnic…

..and Alexandra is not liking the looks of the play doh hot dog too much.

If you have any of these….

Then you probably have too many of these…..   scattered all over your house.

So we took some toilet paper roll tubes and a juice carton and made a garage.

It only fits 8 cars, but they’re fun to make, and this way he can keep a ‘garage’ or two in a few different rooms to play with at will.

Some basic instructions.

We cut folded the end down on a juice carton and taped it with duct tape. 

Next we cut a long front side leaving it attached at the long top side to make a garage door that folded upward.

We cut the toilet paper tubes so they would fit in the carton without the ends sticking out.

We used a hot glue gun to glue the tubes in the garage.

Next we spraypainted the whole thing silver.

He made a ‘Jarod’s Garage’ sign for on the front of the door. (which refused to have it’s picture taken….I discovered that white on shiny silver doesn’t photograph well).

Insert cars.

The end.

Oh, and Make more garages to fit all the other cars.

The Magic Treehouse Series of stories by Mary Pope Osborne.  (aka the Jack and Annie books in our home due to the names of the two main characters.) 

 5 STARS.  Our Suggested Age Range: 4-10

EDUCATIONAL/FANTASY.  Children (and moms), will learn about everything from dinosaurs to gorillas, and from ancient China to the Great SanFrancisco earthquake of 1906 and the Titanic.

OUR THOUGHTS: We all like these books so much that we have the full collection of paperbacks and get new ones as soon as they come out.

MOM:  I like them because they are great stories that are both educational and fun, so the kids don’t mind learning.   I can’t count the number of times the kids have said, “I learned that in a ‘Jack and Annie’ book.” 
JAROD: (age 8):  “I like the books because they have lots of adventure and they always escape stuff.”
MAKENNA: (age 8):  ”I love Jack and Annie because of the adventure, and because there’s usually animals in them.”

MAIN CHARACTERS
A brother and sister, (Jack and Annie).  Ages 7 and 8, respectively.
STORYLINE
Join Jack and Annie as they discover a magic treehouse in the woods near their home.  They travel all over the world and across time where they meet intersting people (like Thomas Edison and Leonordo DaVinci) and help solve problems wherever they go.  Young readers learn about everything from dinosaurs to knights and from ancient China and Egypt to the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and the Titanic.
SERIES 
Currently as of Jan. 2010 there are 43 books to this series.  Each one covers a different time and place in history.  They are available in paperback, harcover and also on audio CD.
EXTRA INFO
We first heard about these books when the twins were 4 and we were looking for stories on CDs that they could listen to on long car rides.  They loved them and we eventually ended up getting all the books on CD before they could read.
There is a great Magic Treehouse website featuring information about all the books, games, and links for further information on the different topics.
There are also Research Guides available to enhance the learning from each Magic Treehouse book.

I’m not sure if Jarod or Brian was more excited over the weekend when their Pinewood Derby car won their Cub Scout Pack Derby.  The darn thing beat out about 50 other cars.

I will admit, I was impressed by their creation, especially since last year’s car finished about dead last.

My contribution was that fine batman paint job that I know you were admiring…I’m sure it wouldn’t have won without the paint job.

The only problem now is that Jarod is not allowed to touch the car until after regionals (in March) for fear of somehow ‘throwing off the balance’, and my hubby is spending an extended period of time looking up all things ‘Pinewood Derby’ on the internet. 

Oh, and yes, they’re already designing next year’s car.

My first project finished in 2010!  Yeah!

I guess I really shouldn’t triumphantly say, ‘Yeah!’, because it was supposed to be a Christmas gift and I just got it done on January 2nd.   On the other hand, luckily, we’re Orthodox and celebrate Christmas again on January 7th (according to the Julian calendar), so I can just pretend I meant to have it done by that Christmas and not the 25th.  Our secret.  OK.

The blanket is knit in the simple Knit 1, Purl 1 stitch the entire way through, which works as long as you cast on an odd number of stitches so you are always knitting a purl stitch and purling a knit stitch.

For this particular blanket I cast 119 stitiches on size 13 needles.  Working with a double strand, (two balls of yarn at once) (K1, P1) and ended with a finished blanket that measures 60″ by 84″.

Here is a girls blanket in the same pattern, and here you can see one for a queen bed that was done in only two colors.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Daddy is going to be so excited taking his festive new lunch bags to work with him each day.   So much more colorful then me just writing his name on his bag each day.  ( you know how you do when you’re little). 

I’m sure he will think of me and the kids even more each day at lunch and laugh.  Which tells you just how lucky I am that my hubby will actually use these bags for his lunch each day.  And because I’m a good wife and didn’t want him too embarassed, I did steer Makenna away from putting princesses and flowers all over her bags.

But really, this turned out to be a fun project for the kids and I can forsee us making more for them to use for themselves or as a little gift for a grandma, aunt or friends.

For supplies we used everything we had on hand.  Construction paper, stickers, markers, crayons, glue, glitter, hole punches and some ribbon or string woven through at the top of the bags. 

Happy Crafting.

And to Brian, Enjoy your lunches honey.

There’s nothing like a completely upcycled Halloween costume to make you feel thrifty.

Combine a box, a black plastic flowerpot, buttons, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, an old cd and some pipe cleaners and we had for a very happy robot.  (I know he doesn’t look real happy on the photo…so you’ll just have to trust me).   

 The initial modeling of the costume had to be done by Alexandra…because, well, she wanted to try it on first.

We used toilet paper tubes cut in half on the top of the body to secure the head in place without having to glue it.   I didn’t want to mess with trying to glue the head to the body, and I wanted Jarod to be able to take the head off without having to remove the whole costume.

An old cd, buttons, and the painted tubes made for the knobs and gadgets.

All in all it looked pretty good, too good in fact, since both the girls want one after Halloween so they can all play robot family.

Cold is coming….well, not right now anyway.  It’s 70 something.  But naturally it was here last weekend for the twins birthday party (40 degrees) so we locked the kids in the basement to play.  Well we didn’t really lock them in the basement although it was tempting.   The quiet was nice.

But anyway, with the cold coming Makenna is concerned for the birds so we made them a birdfeeder.

Your standard recycled milk jug birdfeeder, but it looks cute hanging from the sour cherry tree and the birds seem to like it.  

To make your own.

Clean milk jug.   Cut holes in the two sides opposite the handle (see the big cirlces on the photo) for the birds to stick there little heads in.  Then poke two holes to push a stick or dowel rod through for the birdies to sit on while they’re eating(see the two black dots).   Poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage, but don’t make them too big or the birdseed will fall through.  Leave the lid on and poke two holes at the top and string wire or rope through them to hang your feeder.

Have boys and girls with the same birthday party, and you’ll never have a cohesive theme.

This year it was baseball and bunnies.  (and I will admit to influencing the baseball decision since a nice round baseball is an easy shape for making a pinata and a cake….oh, and thank you Phillies for continuing to win in the playoffs or else it would’ve kinda put a damper on the whole baseball theme.)

The baseball cake was baked in a very well greased round ceramic bowl.  The cake you see here was the second try since the first one was was not well oiled enough and refused to come out of the bowl in a round shape.

The bunny cake was made from two round cakes.  One cut in half and set on the cut sides next to each other for the body and the other round cake cut in  quarters and set the same way against the body for the head.  There were a few left over pieces for taste testing.

The pinatas were started a week in advance and you’ll find the directions in our post from last year’s birthday.

Due to time constraints (i.e. mommy was lazy), I refused to make the pinata into a bunny shape and took the easy way out and just had Makenna paint bunnies on it.  Plus the idea of whacking a bunny looking pinata with a baseball bat seemed a little mean and could send two year old Alexandra into therapy.

The baseball was easy, and the perfect pinata since we were hitting them with a baseball bat.

Birthday Party over. 

Halloween costumes up next….Ghosts anyone?  Please.

While hunting through our local Southern Lehigh Library for some educational videos we were lucky enough to find the series Libertys Kids about the beginning of our great country.

There are six DVDs for a total running time of 19+ hours….19+ hours;  do you know how much I can get done while the kids are mesmerized by the tv (and learning without realizing it) for that long…it’s a beautiful thing.

The videos are split into about 7 short stories on each DVD about different events in America’s history dating from 1773 to 1789, and told through the eyes of two young ‘reporters’, one from England and one from America.  ‘The Boston Tea Party’, The First Fourth of July, Across the Delaware and Deborah Samson — Soldier of the Revolution are just a few of the great stories kids (and parents) learn about with fun animation and music. 

They’re recommended for ages 7 - 12, but even my two year old gets excited when I say we’re going to watch Liberty’s Kids.

We’re only on disc two so far, but I highly recommend them…I’m learning alot.

So if you’re looking for something the kids will love and learn while they’re doing it, hopefully you’ll be able to find Liberty’s Kids at your local library too.