Make Your Own Sidewalk Paint!

When John's home and no weekend duty is to be stood, we're happy to celebrate TGIF. These days, it's more like *sigh* it's Friday. I try to find something constructive to do so we're not sitting around and here's what happened this Friday afternoon.

It's getting hotter by the day so I try to do a project/craft/outing that will eventually involve water. Today, we made our own sidewalk paint. It was super easy and something the boys had a great time with.

Mix equal parts water and corn starch in a bowl. In today's case, I used 3/4 cup of both. Our friend Grace was coming over to play so I wanted enough to go around.

Using something you can fit with a lid, mix the corn starch with the water and food coloring. I happen to have a bunch of Gerber bowls with lids and they worked great.

I tested the bowls before handing them to my eager mixers. Cleaning up a rainbow off the floor didn't sound like fun!

Turner enjoyed shaking up the colors and was, of course, careful.

Eli was just trying to figure out what the heck we were doing

and how soon he could get in to the mess.

Most of the colors mixed in quickly and easily but pink and purple didn't. I was

checking the food coloring package and found it's

from Clementine's Kitchen...in Monterey, CA! Years ago...oops!

Who told this little baby to grow up?!?

Turner, the careful artist.

Elias, the explosive, creative genius.

Right after this picture, someone dumped a bowl over so I put the camera down to show them how to make handprints and other things. Because of the corn starch, the pain dries quickly. We experimented using water to spread the paint and watched the colors wash down the drive way. Eventually, all the paints ended up in the rinse water and they just played in that.

Our sweet friend, Grace, arrived and the boys had already blown through all the paint. Poor Grace, you could tell he knew she was coming over to do something fun. She looked around at the mess like "Thanks for waiting, guys!"

And for our Fun Friday Finale, we brought our friends to our favorite place Ohana Shave Ice right in Atlantic Beach! I could eat this EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. The woman that owns it makes her own syrups and they're unlike anything I've ever tasted! AND, for some reason, the colors don't stain. So, yes, my dear Elias, go ahead and dump the blue ice down your Polo shirt!