It's almost Fall! Leaf Banner

To celebrate Fall's arrival, we started with a leaf rubbing banner to put up. We took a little hike and collected as many different kinds of leaves as we could find... except the poison ivy. We found lots, but we let it be. :) Then we took them all home a laid them out on the kitchen floor.

We taped a long piece of paper over top of them, and got down to business rubbing them with crayons. It took Kaia awhile to get the hang of using the crayons sideways, but once she understood the result she got from it, she went to town. She wanted it took, "look like a rainbow," so we used lots of colour.

 I thought the lines from the tile gaps would be pretty subtle, but when Kaia discovered the texture difference she started scribbling in them. Ah, well :)

Then we got out the watercolours and painted over the entire thing. The crayon wax, resists the paint. Kaia doesn't use a whole lot of discretion when it comes to how much water a piece of paper can handle, so I just kept a paper towel handy and half an eye on what she was doing, soaking up pools as they appeared.

Finished banner, it was hard to get a very good picture of the long banner, but here's what I got.

I think it looks great, although it could probably do with a pass from the iron ;) I'll get around to that some day, I'm sure. lol.

(Thank you Filth Wizardry for the idea)

Cupcake Prototype

Here's my first attempt at a cupcake. It didn't go so well.

The wrapper is removable, but I am not sure how cupcake-like it looks without it. I'm not sure how cupcake-like it looks with it for that matter.

Homemade Playdough

We made some fantastic, colourful, scented playdough. This is my favorite playdough recipe I have ever made. It is so smooth and it feels so good on your hands. It holds together well and it lasts near on forever if you keep it in glass jars, or wrapped up tight in the fridge (although it takes a little working with to warm it up and make it not crumbly if you keep it in the fridge.) If it does start to dry out, you can easily bring it back to feeling like new with a little water and / or vegetable oil. Here's how to make your own:

Play Dough Recipe

1 C Flour
1/2 C Salt
2 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 Tbsp Oil
1 C Water
Food Colouring (optional)
Scent (optional)

Mix all of the above in a pan, adding oil after the water is stirred in.
Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan. Cool and store in an airtight container.

If you want your batch to be all one colour, add the food colouring (and scent, if you choose) in the pan. For multiple colours, leave it out until the dough is done. Then separate the batch into the number of colours you want and knead in the food colouring and / or scent. Wear gloves if you want your hands to be the same colour come tomorrow.(Personally, I don't mind rainbow hands ;) )

The scents I used for these are:
Ground Cinnamon (red)
Orange Oil (orange)
Lemon Zest (yellow)
Ground Dill (green)
Mint Oil (blue)
Clove Oil (violet)
Cocoa Powder & Vanilla Extract (brown)
Vanilla Extract (white)

The white has poppy seeds added to it to give it its speckles.
All colours are 100% edible, although I wouldn't recommend it.
Sparkles are a fun thing to add, too!

Did I mention this makes a great gift? I gave some to each of the little people on my Christmas list. I made a batch for each colour and separated it out for the number of kids, which was 9! I made a plea on Freecycle for those plastic baby food containers with snap on lids, and made sticker labels for them. They went over very well! I will always be keeping it in mind for any future gifts I need. Because we kept ours in glass jars, however, I cannot actually vouch for how well the playdough kept in these plastic containers.

We did also end up making mint chocolate chip which was green with a tad of blue added, poppy seeds, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and mint extract. It was crazy how much it seriously looked and smelled like mint chocolate chip ice cream! It was almost a problem, I wanted mint chocolate chip ice cream so bad every time we got it out, hehe. We also made pink, which was scented with rose and ylang ylang oil, mmmm!

(This post was updated in October of 2010. The playdough Kaia is pictured playing with at the end of the post is the exact same playdough batch that was made in this post in December of 2009, it really does keep well!)