52 MMM Challenge Part 2 - Playdough

I am loving this 52MMM Challenge, it is really inspiring me to do things that I have put off for a long time.  Why oh why haven't I tried this before, I can't believe how easy it was!

Well today I have made play dough for the sweetpeas.  It has been quite a hectic week in the sweetpea household with middle sweetpea suffering an allergic reaction to a bee or wasp sting on her toe on Saturday afternoon.  After seeing tracking marks of an infection heading up her leg and her foot looking like a balloon I rang the Dr and she is now on adult dose antibiotics for the week.  They seem to be working but she has been very bored at home so is back at school today.  She is hardly ever ill, before we went to the Dr she asked if it was the place I had gel put on my belly - that was when little sweetpea was in my tummy and she is now 2 1/2 years old!  I am hoping this will be a nice surprise for her when she gets home.  Sorry enough of my rambling - here is what I did.

 
I found a lovely tutorial on how to make this at Skip to my Lou , it is really good and simple to follow.

All you need is:

A cup of warm water
A cup of flour
1 teaspoon of oil
2 teaspoons cream of tartar (found this is the cake making section of Tesco after looking for ages)
1/4 cup of salt
Food colouring


All you need to do is mix these (apart from the food colouring) ingredients into a pan and then start to warm it up.

Keep stirring and it gets really sticky and hard to stir, when nearly all the water has evaporated take it off the heat.  Let it cool and then take it out of the pan.

I then added a little glitter to mine, you can never have too much sparkle in your life :-)

You can then knead in the food colouring.  You can cut it into as many pieces as you like dependent on how many colours you want to make. I cut mine in to two so that little Sweetpea can learn 2 new colours - I think 4 at once would just confuse her brain.  I also used paste food colouring that I bought off e-bay to make cakes with, it is edible so is safe.

 
Here are the red and blue balls I made.

Just store them in an airtight container.  I think I may start keeping those lovely coffee jars to store this in as it will also make fab pressies for Sweetpeas friends as she gets older and goes to parties.

She absolutely loved playing with it (and still is as I type).  I am hoping the older ones love it just as much.  Be warned however, make sure your little ones don't eat too much of it.  Middle sweetpea was a child who loved to taste everything.  Once when she was at pre-school she came home and pooed bright green for 2 days - when I asked what had she eaten she replied 'playdough'.  When I asked why they hadn't stopped her she replied 'I hid under the table to eat it' :-).  It is quite salty so I am surprised it didn't make her ill.

Really do give this a go if you have little ones, I so wish I had tried it so much sooner!