Rainy Day Fun ~ Homemade Play Dough

I don't like {not going to lie, I REALLY dislike} the mess it makes, but my girls love it. We're all out of the store bought stuff, and Mother Nature has decided to water my garden for me today {it's raining, thus putting our beach play date on hold}. We are determined to have fun anyways, so this morning we made our own play dough. We were out of some of the ingredients, so we improvised, and it turned out great!

We Googled play dough and found a gazillion recipes, so I'm not going to give credit to any one source for this recipe. There are many versions and this seems to be one of the more popular ones.

We gathered our ingredients and measured out:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

4 teaspoons lemon juice {or 2 teaspoons cream of tartar}

1 cup water

1 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon cupcake sprinkles {or 2-3 drops of food coloring, which we didn't have}

We then combined the dry ingredients in a saucepan {flour & salt, in our case} and mixed everything together.

Next, we combined the wet ingredients & coloring {water, oil, lemon juice, cupcake sprinkles} and stirred well.

Then, we slowly poured the wet ingredients over the dry and mixed well.

I placed the saucepan on the stove over medium heat and stirred constantly until the mixture became doughy and stuck together {this took only a couple minutes}.

Then, I dumped the dough out onto a board and waited for it to cool a bit. Once it cooled, I kneaded it until it became smooth.

Once smooth, you can store in baggies or containers {it is supposed to last a long time if stored properly}. Or, do what I did, allow it to cool enough for the kiddos to play!

And create!  

This stuff was neat. We used course sea salt because I didn't want to grind 1/2 cup of salt. As a result, we were left with some chunks of salt in the dough {Addy called it sparkly and fun so it wasn't a big deal}. One of my biggest pet peeves is the mess the store bought stuff leaves behind. This stuff left way less mess & was much easier to wipe up.  Plus, it smelled {MUCH} better. I think I'll buy some food coloring {or more sprinkles} and make some more!

:) Jen