salt and flour paint

I think I've figured out why people (mostly me) share fun stuff they do with their kids on their blogs. It's not to say, "Hey, you! Look at how awesome I am. I'm the cool mom that does art with her kids. I foster their creativity! My kids are amazing and so am I. Seriously. I am awesome."

While most of the time I'd have to say that I am indeed awesome, cool and amazing, here's a few of my reasons for the sharing.

1. I'd like to have proof for them to look back at some day (like when they are teenagers and think I'm totally lame) to see that I tried! Really I did. I'm not the fun mom but dang it, I tried.

2. As much as I hate messes, I know that they love them. I have pretty much raised them to not like getting their hands or faces messy. I'm satisfied with that (and they'd better not go to therapy some day and then be told that their issues stem from having a mother who made them wipe their hands and faces because that's just wrong). I know they need chances to just be messy. Remember the sidewalk paint? That turned out to be way more messy than this.

3. Maybe you're a mom and think it looks like fun and you'd like to try it too (as long as you enjoy messes and fostering creativity, of course).

4. Of all the other things I manage to accomplish in a day, these kinds of things are the ones I feel proud about and want to take pictures of. Want to see all the dishes I washed, the clothes I folded and put away, the little pile of dirt and dust and muck I swept off the kitchen floor, the bums I wiped, the cups I filled with juice, milk and water, the breakfast, lunch and dinner I made, the fights I refereed or the weeds I pulled? No? Ok then.

5. I want Grama Bama to see all the fun she's missing out on.

On with the painting!




I came across this recipe for salt and flour paint recently. I knew Danny and Cate would love it. Just look at that face. Doesn't it look like the face of a kid that loves salt and flour paint?

After I made the paint, we headed out to the big picnic table in the back yard. I spread out a big piece of brown paper, gave them the squirt bottles and let their creative juices flow.

One minor problem, the little bits of flour in the paint kept clogging up the squirt bottles. I sent Danny inside for toothpicks.

I unclogged paint and then we discovered that maybe it would be fun to swirl the colors around.



Oh, yes. Loads of fun.



Then Cate thought it would be even more fun to dump out all the toothpicks and smear them around in her huge blob of paint.



Thrilling stuff. Can you just see the creativity oozing?





And then Danny found another use for the toothpicks, Cate wandered off to play in the sandbox and we were done.

Notes for next time:

I've got to find some way to make the purple paint actually purple instead of gray. I asked the kids if they wanted me to try to make it more purple or just leave it gray. They liked the gray.

Maybe I'll make a big batch in the blender so there won't be any lumps. Or sift the flour first. I don't know. The little lumps were really cramping my style. It turned out to be way more supervised than I wanted.

Wearing old clothes would probably be a good idea too.

Buy lots more salt.