The touch, the smell...

...of homemade playdoh.  Every time I make it, I wonder why I ever bother with the store bought kind. (Oh, because it makes a giant mess of my kitchen and uses up all the flour and salt and then I want to make cookies and I have to cry because there's no salt or flour.)

Also, every time I make it, I start cooking and wonder how this mess is going to turn into pretty playdoh:

But it does - like magic!

Once it cools, I knead it in a big ball, then break it in half and roll the dough into two logs, like so:

I break the logs into three pieces each, and roll into balls... leaving six equal-ish pieces of bland and boring off-white playdoh:

Raina jabs a finger into the middle of each, and helps me squirt in some food coloring.  We use regular old grocery store food coloring, but some day I'll splurge on some liquid watercolors or gel food coloring.  We've also made jello playdoh, which makes nice colors and smells great!

 All rolled and smooshed:

all pretty and stacked.

Wait.  Hold up.  There's a color missing!  

THIS is what happens when you use regular food coloring to attempt purple playdoh.  It's a no-go.  A playdoh no-no no-go.  Uh-oh.

Next to the blue, it looks semi-purple.  But really, it's a gooey mess of blue and red, sort of grey, sort of midnight blue, and all kinds of not pretty or fun to play with.  Blech.

Apparently, the only way to really achieve purple is with the aforementioned liquid watercolor or gel food coloring.  Some day our rainbow playdoh caterpillar will have an appropriately purple behind!

Till then, our Roy G. Biv will be named Roy G. Bi.  

 Still pretty.

Raina's first move?  Stack them up, roll them together.

Figures.  

She loves mixing playdoh.  

And paint.

And assuring me, "It's okay, mumma!  Mixing colors is still pretty!"

We let some plastic animals take a walk through the playdoh rainbow mountain so we could see what kind of tracks they make...

And then we cut the mountain in half to find a SECRET HIDDEN RAINBOW!!!

This, my friends, is mind blowing for the 3 year old set.

And before I knew it, the pretty playdoh was all swirled together.

And yeah, it's still beautiful!