Hooray for homemade playdough!!

The kids decided to play playdough this morning, but found to their great disappointment that we were completely out of all our playdough.  The Measle was soooo sad!  Look at that lip.

Then I remembered that some people actually make their playdough, rather than buy it.  This is just the kind of thing I'm wanting to do more of- now that I'm a producer-in-training and all.

Of course my kids weren't satisfied with one or two colors.  They wanted a smorgasbord of playdough.  The girls are busy baking bread and cookies in these pictures.

My American Boy (4) requested "dark blue" and I think I did a pretty good job of matching it to his R2D2.

Louie (22 months) wanted pink.  Of course, every time I turned around she was putting another piece in her mouth and we did NOT make edible playdough.  I may need to try that next time, but I shudder at the thought of working with peanutbutter in my hands.  Yuck!

Even Monk (11) got in on the playdough action.  He stood over me to make sure we got his color precisely "Master Chief green" and then proceeded to make people in the people mold and squash them with his bionicle.

What do you think of our rainbow of colors?  I hope they last!

Here's the recipe we used for basic playdough:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 T cream of tartar

1 cup water

2 T oil

food coloring

Mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately then combine them in a pan.  Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens to the point you can hardly stir it.  Dump out on counter dusted with flour and knead until flour is absorbed into playdough.  I made a full recipe the first time then realized we should probably half it.  It should be possible to make a really big batch of playdough and then separate and color, but we didn't do it this way.  I made a separate half recipe for each color.  I thought it was easier to get to the thickness and color we wanted with a smaller batch.