Playdough, with extras...

Playdough is a wonderful toy that even the most uncrafty person can make, and for just pennies! Start with a simple, basic recipe like this. Play around with it a little. Playdough is difficult to mess up, but you may find you prefer a certain consistency, or prefer to do certain steps in certain orders. I don't like to start with colored water personally. I split up the dough and do multiple colors after it is made.

So after you make all the playdough, then work the colors in really well (don't forget to mix the food coloring to get green, orange, purple, and brown!), you have to decide how to store it. If you are giving it as a gift, you may want something special, like Christmas tins, which can be found at the dollar store or walmart. Most kids are perfectly happy with ziploc baggies though. You could reuse old playdough containers. The BEST container I have found is the milk bottles I got while Charlie was in the NICU and I was pumping for her. We used to have dozens, but over the years they've been lost or tossed for one reason or another. We have 6 left now, all used for playdough. So if you have the chance (and if you do, I'm sorry to hear your baby is not well), snatch up a couple dozen of them. They are also good for homemade baby food.

One awesome variation to traditional playdough is scented playdough! I decided to make this stuff on a whim. Adrian needed more playdough anyway and I'd heard of people adding cocoa and stuff to it before. I went through my cupboards, got out everything that smelled good and just went for it. So my 8 little balls of playdough were destined to be scented with cocoa, vanilla extract, lemon extract, almond extract, peppermint extract, lavender, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie (nutmeg and cinnamon mixed). *An important note* I wouldn't use any essential oils or nutmeg if your child is younger and still tends to eat the stuff. Nutmeg in larger quantities (and you do have to use more than you would in a pie) has a hallucinatory effect and essential oils are also not safe in larger quantities. You know your child best, play it safe. My kid is 6 and has oral aversions, so I put it all in.

Once the dough is scented and covering up the noticeable playdough scent, you can color it. I tried to pick colors that "matched" the scent. Red for cinnamon, yellow for lemon, ect. Blue didn't have a match so I just put it in the almond one. The cocoa one didn't need coloring at all. It was a beautiful, rich brown color from the cocoa alone.

So your playdough is made and in it's fancy (or not so fancy) containers. What now? How can you make this toy more exciting? Well, with playdough accessories, of course! You definitely need cookie cutters and a rolling pin. You can get them fairly cheap in a store, or you can raid your cupboards and maybe even Grandma's basement (that's where I found mine!). Throw in other fun utensils like drinking straws, toothpicks, plastic-ware, ect. Remember to keep it age-appropriate.

And how do you keep all of this off your carpet? A special "playdough mat"!

For ours I used PUL, which is a common waterproof material used in cloth diapers. I sewed it shiny-side out to some extra material. It doesn't fray though, so you could just cut a big square and leave it like that. Jo-ann Fabrics started carrying PUL, so you don't have to order it online. Or you could just package the whole set up with a vinyl table cloth. You can even use old placemats. Whatever you use, it will be special to your child because it will be THEIR playdough mat.