Works For Me Wednesday

Today's Works for Me Wednesday (hosted by We are That Family) theme is Summer Boredom. Thankfully, we have yet to experience this phenomenon here this year (reality check, we've only been out of school for two weeks) but I am prepared! Our boredom buster is simple - we pull out the Girl Scout badge book. This year S has set a monstrous goal to earn ALL of the badges she can (which mean every one out of the book that looks remotely interesting and lots more from other councils). By the end of the summer we are going to be badge divas! So far, we have used badges to help us plan a zoo trip, visit the local historical museum (can you say, *free*), try cooking some new recipes, volunteer at the animal shelter, make homemade playdough to share with our friends (yes, the other moms do love us!), design a "dream room" and learn how to check the fluids in the car. Since not everyone can be a neighborhood kid and get a cute little container of playdough we thought we would share our homemade playdough recipe with everyone.

Supplies:

1 cup flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla or any essential oil, optional
about 15 drops of food coloring, color of your choice

Directions:

Cook all ingredients in a medium sauce pan, over medium heat, stirring real hard until mixture forms a ball. About 4 minutes. Remove from pan and let sit for about five minutes. Knead briefly and the dough is ready to use. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

I usually split the dough into two pots to mix in the coloring and scent to get two colors out of each batch. You can keep this out of the fridge, I use this same recipe to make playdough for my classroom and we would keep it in the cabinet. After a few months it can start to smell funny(not sure if mine was from all the kids playing with it or just the dough getting old). Since it's so cheap to make, when it starts to not smell so good, we just chuck it and start over.