Home-Made Play Dough

After cleaning out my basement getting ready for the garage sale next month I rediscovered my Play Dough box from when I use to do daycare. I am sorry to say that my 3 year old has never even played with the play dough toys I have collected over the years. My older children wanted to play with it, and as it is SNOWING today (April 26th) I thought it would be a good time.

The picture above is all the ingredients you need to follow the recipe below.

Saturday Play Dough:

3 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp Cream of Tartar

Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Add 2 cups boiling water
3 tbs hand lotion (any kind you have)
2 tbs vegetable oil

Mix all ingredients together well, see video below. WARNING: My husband was watching a concert on TV at the time, so there is music behind the video!

Let cool for approx 15 minutes. Knead together when cool. Divide into sections for coloring. Add 5-10 drops of food coloring into center of ball and knead slowly so you don't get food coloring everywhere! Add more flour if needed to get right consistency.


Play with your play dough! When done, store in air tight containers or baggies. This should keep for up to 1 month.

There are many different play dough recipes out there. You can always Google home made play dough recipe to find more, including edible ones for those who can't keep it out of their mouths.

End-of-the-Year Teacher Gifts

My Project:

I recently went to Bath & Body Works with coupons in hand to buy gifts for my kids four teachers for the end-of-the-year gifts. If you would like to see how to get the lotions & such, please click here to my other blog.

My two older children each have one teacher, and the pre-schooler has two teachers.

Here is what you need to make these buckets:

1 bottle of hand lotion

1 bottle of body spray in the same scent

2 packs of Tea

1 medium sized garden bucket

2 sheets tissue paper

some sort of label or thank you card

I found five pink buckets in my basement. I seriously can't even remember why I bought them, but they did still have a clearance sticker from Target on the bottom of them.

Take two sheets of tissue paper (mine is recycled from old gifts) and arrange them in the bucket so it hangs over the edge and looks pretty.

Arrange the contents in the bucket so they fit snugly inside. Add your label or card either inside or attached to the tissue.

My 10 yrs old daughter made all four of these buckets up for me. It took her awhile to get the tissue "just right", but with a little help from me, we got it. She then went on the computer to make her own labels for them. I left that completely up to her, and she did a great job with them.

Your Project:

Look at your craft stash. Do you have any buckets, baskets or cute boxes you can cover in your basement? Take a double look at them to see if you can use them as End-of-the-Year Teacher gifts too.