Making Your Own Play Dough

On Thursday, I decided to live dangerously. I enlisted the kids' help in making our own play dough. It was actually much simpler than I thought it would be, and the only real mess that was made was when Neely scooped a spoonful of salt and flour from the pot and pitched it onto the floor. Nothing the Dirt Devil couldn't fix.

If you'd like to try it yourself, here's what you need:

2 c. flour

2 c. warm water

1 c. table salt

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 tbsp. cream of tartar

food coloring

Step One: Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. (Note: If you decide to scrape the gunk that gets stuck on the spoon off with your finger, DO NOT lick it clean. This is a knee-jerk reaction of mine, and I spent the next few minutes spitting in the sink. Bleh!)

Step Two: Cook over medium-low heat until the mixture takes on the consistency of dough and huddles up in the center of the pan.

Step Three: Let cool. We started ours before lunch and let it cool while we were eating.

Step Four: Separate the dough into balls, as many or as few as you'd like, depending on how many colors you want. I think we did five. Make a little hole in the middle of your dough with your finger, and add four or five drops of food coloring. Knead until smooth and uniform in color. And Mamas, this will give you a good little arm workout. Please don't look too closely at the weird gray one. I tried to make purple.

Voila! Homemade play dough.

Oh, one more thing. I'm sorry these pictures are so bad. Both of my camera batteries were dead, so I had to take these with my phone.