Popsicle puzzle fun

A few months ago, I pinned some toddler activities to a board on Pinterest, and it hit me that for as many things as I have pinned, I haven't really done much with them. I decided to change that by making something that would be ideal for a trip that we were taking this past week, and it felt so good to be creative. Elle kept saying "Mommy's caft" (craft), and this was about as easy as could be.

I made four puzzles - two for my friend Meghan's son, Ryan (below), and two for Elle. My thought process was that these would be distracting on plane rides, yet not be too heavy or take up much space, and also not be so time-intensive or fancy that a lost piece would be the absolute worst thing ever.

Tim reported that Elle loved the one I made of the three of us (above) and enjoyed it on their flight together to Ohio. She kept looking at the pieces saying "Mommy," "Daddy" and "Elle Belle,"  and more significantly, it kept her occupied.

I used a tutorial that I found here, and I've noted a few things I learned below.

I used wide popsicle sticks that I bought at Michael's. I followed the advice of a few other tutorials and discarded any sticks with warps or curves that wouldn't allow the pieces to lie flush against each other. I taped the popsicle sticks together tightly. This was fine, but next time I won't put them together so tightly because it was hard to use the Xacto knife to cut them apart later on. Just a little bit of breathing room would have helped immensely.

I thought two layers of Mod Podge would be better than one - I tried two on the photo puzzle above, and I ended up with bubbles. One layer on the rest? Worked fantastically.

After the Mod Podge dried, I flipped them over and cut through the slats. I used an old cookie sheet covered with some folded over parchment paper. As I mentioned above, the sticks were extremely tight and it was hard to slice right down the space between the sticks and through the photo. I found it extremely easy to cut little slivers of popsicle stick off. Cuts that were exactly clean or on areas that hadn't glued down well ended in small parts of the photo tearing off of the stick it was supposed to be on. But hey, it was my first attempt and the puzzles were for toddlers - I figured the thought counted more than perfect images.

Aside from the Mod Podge drying time, these puzzles took about 10 minutes to do. I had the Mod Podge from other crafts, the 5x7 photos cost just a little more than $1, and the package of popsicle sticks will make at least six puzzles and cost less than $3. Hello, fun, personalized, easy, inexpensive craft. We'll be good friends.

I had Tim test one of Ryan's puzzles. He passed.

Cloud dough

A few months ago I came across Ashley's post about Cloud Dough. A few days later, Cloud Dough made an appearance on another favorite blog of mine. I bookmarked it and was saving it for a rainy or hot day, because I thought it looked easy, fun and cheap.

Saturday was warm, and while I wanted to hit the pool with Elle, we ended up stuck inside because of scattered showers. I decided to break out my dollar store baby oil and an extra bag of flour, and we went to town.

Cloud Dough basics: Eight cups flour, one cup baby oil, one container, mix. 

I spread out an old plastic tablecloth to contain the potential mess. Elle thought it was a magical square and probably would have been happy to just run around it sans Cloud Dough.

Then she had fun running around with the lid to the container I was using to hold the Cloud Dough.

Then she enjoyed playing with the dough. We buried toys, we dug, we sculpted, we used cookie cutters to make shapes, we flung (I wasn't so happy about that one), etc.

Everything was going well until someone very uncharacteristically tried to put the Cloud Dough in her mouth. I shut down the shop at that point and we cleaned up. The cool thing is that shutting down the shop entailed putting the lid on the container, so we could pull out the Cloud Dough again some other day soon.

Tim and Elle played with the Cloud Dough the next two days, too. Tim likes to call it Cookie Dough, and Elle just looks at him until he corrects himself. (Or I correct him. You know.) Simple, fun activity that I can guarantee we'll be doing again.