Your Dough is My Dough, My Dough is My Dough: Pumpkin Pie Playdough

We've made a few batches of pumpkin pie playdough this fall and each of them have smelled good enough to eat.  Our two favorites are a cooked batch we made at home and a no-cook one mom made with us at preschool.  We followed this recipe for the cooked one and it has stayed good in the fridge for a few weeks.  And it has provided HOURS of play for both of us -- especially once mom gave up on trying to make Cam not eat it and ponied up the dough for some more legit playdough toys for us (really, sometimes the imaginative wooden toys just get old).  Make sure to read the recipe before shopping -- mom took one look at the picture and bought several jars of canned pumpkin pie filling, which is not actually in the playdough and which we know mom will not use to cook us a pumpkin pie.

Because we don't have a stove at school, mom had the teacher bring in an electric tea kettle and we all helped in mixing up a batch of this no-cook recipe.  It wasn't technically a recipe for pumpkin pie playdough, but we just added in some of our Trader Joe's pumpkin pie spice we used from the cooked batch and it worked out fine.  Each of us helped mom measure out the ingredients in a big pot.  Mom then added the boiling water and mixed it together.  When it was cooler, but still warm, we all got a big hunk to mix in the colors and spice.  Mom tripled the recipe and that made enough for each of us to take some home and leave some at school, which we continued to play with the rest of the week. 

We can't wait to make some more holiday varieties!  Anyone have any good ones to share?  Happy Halloween!!!

Now that's what I'm talkin about.

I Can Learn to Resist Anything but Temptation: Clear Crayon Resist

So the other day mom gave me a crayon to draw with, but even though I scribbled and scribbled, it didn't make any mark.  I thought "what kind of facacta art project is this?"  Then she busted out the watercolors and it all became clear.  Actually, I had forgotten about the crayon at that point but mom kept going "look, look, Cami.  your coloring!"  So I assume that it was supposed to have all become clear.  In reality, I gave her a "lady, what?" look and kept on painting.  Mom said it wasn't a big hit at Kane's preschool either.  What does she expect?  She doesn't practice the principle of delayed gratification well at all.  Not sure why she was surprised.  But I still had a good time.

hmm.  this crayon doesn't seem to work either.

what the heck, mom?

ahh, yes.  i see it.  (what is she talking about?)

i'll just keep painting.  maybe she'll pipe down.

But Outside It's Stopped Raining: Playseum Cap Hill

[A preliminary side note -- no, you aren't losing it.  we do have a new 'do.  mom has been restyling all of us in preparation for winter and that includes our blog.]

We've been wary of hitting up the relatively new D.C. location of the Playseum simply because our trip to the Bethesda site did not score highly on anyone's scale (including cleanliness, accessibility, level of which it wore our a**es out).  But since Kane has started his recent regimen of crescendo night waking (starts out every 3 hours and works his way up to every 20 minutes around 4 a.m.), mom has decided that his afternoon naptime must decrease (but not cease.  she won't go there yet) and late afternoon activity must increase.  Plus it was raining.  So we hauled ourselves down to Capitol Hill (it's right off of 395, not a bad drive at all.  but, it was raining.  and this is D.C.) to check out the Playseum, which is having its last few days of $4 after 4 p.m. (currently only running for the month of October).  We got there with just 45 minutes left to play, but we made the most of it.  Plus it was almost empty -- only two other little girls were there.  So we basically had our run of the place.  This location is MUCH bigger, citified (includes a China Town and a courtroom), and has a "pirate ship" -- it's really just a bunch of little sandboxes in a room made to look like a pirate ship, but it did the trick for Kane.  And Kane got to use a nifty apple thingamabober (like this one) to peel, core and slice an apple.  Once the nice lady from the Playseum realized we weren't going to actually eat the apple, she let us feed it to the BUNNY RABBITS!  That was a real hit.  Also high on the list was the musical instruments for Kane and the kayak for me.  I don't know if this is something we'd do all that often (mom still thinks it could be claustrophobic with more kids in there), but we'd likely go back late afternoon to the Cap Hill outfit.

We are also much more likely to go back because there is a Matchbox a few doors down, which mom braved with us by herself for din.  Back in the day, mommy and daddy were frequenters of the China Town location because the sliders covered in onion straws are out of this world.  Unfortunately, so I was I by the point the sliders made it to our table.  I refused to eat anything.  In fact I refused to do anything other than wield my knife and practice my two new words "no" and "move."  Kane took to them like a champ, however, and had three before mom decided we needed to leave to avoid a major disaster.  It started out fun, though.  It had stopped raining and we sat outside, the waiter brought us pizza dough to play with, and I perfected my mad Miss America wave at all the peeps passing by.

We threw a b-day party for this monkey I jacked from the pirate ship.

giddy up.

I went all Townshend on that axe.

mom, we want a kayak.

no, seriously.  here i am using my new vocab skill of combining the words "no," "move," and "arggg."

Kane creepin'

Pizza Pie is Also Nice: "Homemade" 'Za

Our oven was recently fixed after mom let it sit there for a month and a half cold and alone.  I think mom would have let it stay that way, but the fix-it man was hounding her.  To "celebrate" its recent return, we decided to make "homemade" pizza thanks to Trader Giatto's whole wheat pizza dough and sauce.  I was up first so I picked chicken/turkey sausage and mozzarella.  Cam chose pesto chicken and goat cheese.  I know mom was waiting for us to skedaddle out of the kitchen so she could sneak some veggies in there, but we were vigilant.  They weren't the healthiest pizzas we've ever eaten and we were incredibly messy, but it was a lot of fun.  And we even ate our dinner that night.

My Autumn Almanac: Apple Tree Stampers

I had another chance last week to do a craft by myself with mom that she had done earlier with Kane at school.  We combined a few different crafts we've seen (including this one) to make apple trees using our arms, hands, and apples as stamps with some washable tempera paint.  Apparently when Kane did this at school, he quickly smeared his all together.  What can I say - he's into abstract art.  That or he doesn't like being told what to do.  Wonder where that came from.  I think I did a pretty good job and mom thought my little arm and hand print were so adorable (i swear, sometimes it's like taking candy from a baby.  well, not this baby.  i know better), she could have cared less whether or not this resembled an actual apple tree.  And then I got to do a little free paint with the apples, which of course was my favorite (besides the old standards of painting myself and eating the paint, obvi).

My Apple Trees

Kane's Interpretive Apple Tree No. 1