Homemade Playdough

It's a full month into the new year and most of you have already given up on your resolutions, right? That my friends is why I set goals this year instead.

One of my goals for 2011 was to be a more creative mom. With this in mind, I (oh-so creatively) Googled around for indoor toddler activities and found a classic, Homemade Playdough.

Eljiah and I made this in less than 10 minutes one day during an Atlanta blizzard (snow flurries to you Northerners) and it has provided at least an hour's worth of entertainment since.

Sidenote: If an hour doesn't sound very long to you, you do not live on Toddler Time. Toddler Time is like dog years. One minute equals one hour and one hour has been known to last up to one week in Toddler Time. Even if you don't have a toddler yourself, you may occasionally find yourself on Toddler Time. This most frequently occurs when you are in a hurry and unavoidably land behind a harried mother of two at the grocery store.

But Homemade Playdough. It is AWESOME. Never again will I get caught on game night with a shriveled nugget of Cranium playdough!

Here's the recipe:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt (we used Kosher)

2 Tbsp Cream of Tartar

1 Tbsp lotion (any old kind will do. We used J&J baby lotion and I think it helps keep your hands from drying out while you're playing.)

1 cup water

Food coloring

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a saucepan, then cook for 5 minutes or so over medium heat while stirring in water. You'll know it's done when it looks like...well...playdough.

Add several drops of food coloring and let the kids help knead until your color comes through nice and bright!

This recipe makes a good sized hunk of dough. You could definitely split it in half and have two different colors. We made yellow and blue, by which time my creative juices were overflowing, so I showed the Squirt what happens when you put the two together. Genius. Sheer genius.