Snow Dough and Cloud Dough

For day 9 of our Christmas Countdown, I made Calvin some very special (and really really weird) Snow Dough!

Found this on Pinterest and when I saw the ingredients I was like "Whaaa??? Seriously?"

That's right, people. Toilet paper, Ivory soap, and water. (Glitter was my own addition. I used the recipe from this post on Modern Mommyhood.)

You start by tearing the TP up into little bits in a bowl or plastic container. This part is kind of annoying. You need about half a roll, so rip away. The smaller the better, but it was driving me crazy so my pieces weren't that small. That huge piece you can see in the picture was Calvin's contribution. He had even less patience for the ripping part than I did. I ripped it up into smaller pieces after I took the pic.

We used more TP than what you see in the container here. I used about half the roll.

Next you microwave the Ivory soap. I know, right. I told you this is weird. Microwave it for 1-2 minutes. And it must be Ivory soap. Apparently other soaps don't do this crazy thing you're about to see...

Microwaved Ivory soap

It looks foamy, but it is actually papery and you can rip it up just like the toilet paper and add it to your container. When I had ripped up all that I could, there was still a hard piece in the middle that hadn't puffed up, so I put it back into the microwave for another minute.

And it puffed right up again! I ripped that one up and added it to the rest. Then I sprinkled glitter all over it! 

I am sorry about these blurry photos! I must have had too much coffee that day... 

Here's where I got a little lazy and I'd do it differently next time. I just kind of threw everything into the container in layers and then poured the water over it and tried to mix it. The result was that it was hard to incorporate the toilet paper with the soap and glitter and I had to pull apart big chunks of wet toilet paper in order to get a consistent mix. I'd recommend mixing the TP, the weird soap flakes, and the glitter really well while they are all still dry. Then when you add the water I think it will be more even. I only used 1.5 c. water, but the recipe from Modern Mommyhood says she used 2.5 cups. I feel like it was plenty wet and pliable and it felt like if I added more it would have been too liquid. Maybe I had less absorbent toilet paper than she did.

Ok, so all that work and here was our beautiful, slightly blue and slightly sparkly Snow Dough! Here ya go Calvin! Now you get to play with it! 

You wan't me to touch that?

Um. no. Bye bye.

Mo-ommmm... noooooooo....

Or not.

Yet again, mama strikes out with her brilliant idea. #facepalm #everybodysacritic

Well, I made a super cute snowman out of it all by myself thankyouverymuch. Meanwhile, Calvin requested to play with his Cloud Dough instead. 

Fine. Cue the Cloud Dough!

So, Cloud Dough is way easier to make. It's just two ingredients, though you can get fancy by adding food coloring, glitter, or even scented oils. But the basic recipe is just oil + flour. And from what I've read from the collective wisdom of Pinterest, you can use any kind of oil that is liquid at room temp (so, not coconut oil, but pretty much anything else). I opted for canola oil. 

All the recipes I have read for Cloud Dough, like this one from Happy Hooligans use a 1:8 ratio of oil to flour. However, when I was making ours, apparently I got distracted or something because I only used 4 cups of flour and I didn't realize it until we were already playing with the dough. It was plenty fun with our 1:4 mix, so I was like, why use more flour? And I left it as it was. So ours is probably wetter than typical Cloud Dough. 

The oil makes the flour stick together slightly so you can mold it and shape it. Calvin likes to bury little plastic jewels in it and have his dinosaurs dig them out :)

That batch of Cloud Dough has lasted us since August. I keep it in a tupperware container. I'm not sure how long the Snow Dough will last. Anybody know about saving Snow Dough?

Calvin absolutely will not touch the Snow Dough, but he loves the Cloud Dough! Go figure. Maybe if we pretend the dinosaurs are building a snowman... 

Do you wanna build a snowman? :)