Saturday Salt Dough Garden Mosaic

On Saturdays we plan to bring you tons of ideas on how to keep your little ones busy. Whether they love playing in the outdoors or they could be stuck inside on a rainy weekend day we will be providing several ideas to keep them up and active. Most of these ideas take supplies that are usually sitting around your home.

Today it was way too hot to play in the little kiddie pool in the back yard and not to mention its slightly green from yesterday's rain, so we had to keep the boys busy on the inside. I'm not one to put on the television and let them vegetate so I dug through the junk cabinet to find supplies for an indoor craft. Besides the fact it was my mother's birthday on Monday and I'm yet to give her a gift, things like this always make you look crafty yet heartfelt in your gift.
I found the article to make this craft in a stash of magazine pages my grandmother keeps for us. It is super easy and safe for the kids. I know my little one loved it and enjoyed tasting it.

Our first kid's activity is a Salt Dough Garden Mosaic:

Supplies:
3 Cups flour
1 Cup salt
1 1/4 Cups water (plus up to an additional 1/4 cup as needed)
(I ended up adding about 1/2 a cup to get it to a consistency I liked)

Go turn your oven on to 275 degrees real quick.

I recommend using an electric mixer on a medium speed.
After mixing all of the ingredients together you do not want the dough to be crumbly.
(this is where that extra water comes in)

This is also the step where you can add in any food coloring to change the color of the dough. I didn't want the dirty gray/white color so mine is blue. Well, more of a teal since I was using the neon collection food coloring.

Knead the dough until it is smooth and go ahead and divide it into pieces based on how large you want them. I broke mine into two pieces so the two little men could each make their own.
After I separated mine and put them on a piece of foil, I made them into the disk shape (make them a ball then flatten for an easy way to make a disk)The foil really helps with cleanup as well.

I was super lucky and found a bag of dollar store rocks in the craft closet.
(Which I believe every woman should have a craft closet)
I set the boys down, gave them each a handful of rocks and let the creative juices flow.

 
Transfer the foil and dough onto a baking sheet and leave them in for two hours.
Let them cool and check for any loose stones. If any did fall out then take some tacky glue and replace it. No one will know but you.

Now you have a gorgeous decoration for your porch or a heartfelt gift for that grandmother who swears she never sees her grand babies.
Thanks so much for checking us out and we will be back tomorrow!

-Brittany and Lindsey