Mommy's Little Helper

I have had some rough days lately. Arianna has made it a regular occurrence to wake up 3 or more times a night. I'm thinking it has to do with teething, but I'm not quite sure. That makes for a grumpy mommy! So you can imagine my pleasure when I stumbled across some sanity.

Let me start at the beginning. The dinnertime rush is always my weakest moment when I'm tired. Trying to make dinner while dealing with a baby who wants to play with mommy, listening to children bicker, all while tidying up the house always results in disaster. My breaking point usually comes right around the time daddy walks through the door. Poor daddy, as he usually receives the brunt of my frustration.

While reading some of my favorite blogs a couple of weeks ago, I came across a recipe for homemade play dough. It's not that I haven't seen a recipe for this before, it's just that I had never thought to make it for my kids. Why hadn't I thought to make it before? Let's chalk it up to "mommy brain" and move on, okay?

I actually ended up not using the recipe from the blog I found, because it required dirtying more dishes than I wanted to dirty. It was right around dinnertime and I didn't feel like making more dishes to clean. I searched the internet for a recipe to use and came across one from my favorite Food Network personality: Alton Brown. I quickly made it and introduced it to my children. Here's what they thought:

(excuse his messy hair, he had just awakened from his nap)

The kids were occupied for well over an hour, and they only stopped because it was time to eat. They have played peacefully with the dough for the past three days. I wonder how many stress-free nights this little helper will give me....hopefully many!

If you want to make your own dough, here's Alton's recipe:

mix 1/2 cup of salt with 1 cup of flour, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and 1/2 cup of water

I had to use about 1/2 - 1 cup more flour than the recipe calls for, so you might need to add extra as well. And you can color the dough with food coloring or kool-aid (the unsweetened kind) but be careful that you don't stain your clothes, counters, hands, etc. After the kids enjoy themselves, we put the dough in a plastic bag and stick it in the fridge where it waits to rescue me once again. What a frugal toy!

I'm sure the newness of this play dough will eventually wear off. Do you have any other frugal toy/game/babysitter suggestions for when the inevitable occurs?

This post is linked to Frugal Friday.