Rainy Day Fun

Jules here-

I agreed to watch a little 4-year-old guy from my church from 8:30-1PM today in hopes that it would a perfect day to play outside-- instead.... torrential downpours all morning.  So in anticipation of the gloomy forecast, I used my pinterest-addiction to pay off.   So I declared today a well-needed "Silly Day" as my children have been "helping" with all the packing, cleaning, and organizing for almost 2 weeks now. 

After making some fantastic shaped pancakes, the kids were face-painted and we listened to some awesome silly music.  For snack, I had the kids mix, measure, and stir up these delicious banana muffins. To make them "silly" they could make mini-chocolate chip smiley faces on each (though the faces kind of melted into the muffins....):

Simple ingredients that you have on hand.

After devouring some delectable, gooey muffins, I prepped for the next activity.  I grabbed my well-used pampered chef prep bowls and added the following ingredients:

See how cool it looks? It's hard too-- instantly dry!

Homemade Puffy Paint

1 TBS self-rising flour
1 TBS salt
Food coloring
1.5 tsp water (play around with adding water until it's "paint-able")

Mix the ingredients together and let the kids use Q-tips to paint on thick paper (I had old card-stock that worked great!).  The children decorated their pages for a long time, until I revealed the "surprise".  After James completed his picture, I popped it in the microwave for 25 seconds and VIOLA!  The paint puffed up!!

The kids scrambled to finish each painting so they could see the magical surprise of their paint "growing" in the microwave.  They each made 3-4 pictures and spent over an hour (even James....) painting.

Grace's Puffy Masterpieces

 Though I had several other activities planned, the puffy paint took up way more time than I anticipated (yeah!) and after lunch and a disastrous  toy clean-up-- I survived having an additional little boy in the house!  James adored having another "boy" in the house and they all played wonderfully (and LOUDLY) the entire morning.

Easy Rule #40908- Be over-prepared when you have lots of kids-- it's much better to not get to everything than be bored.

Easy Rule #8789- Sometimes it might be o.k. to say "No" to play dates when you are trying to keep your house clean to sell....