Day 48

You don’t need me to tell you that Pittsburgh is getting a makeover right now… blizzard style. And we’re not the only city, I know many of you are reaching your max capacity for the white stuff and I hope everyone is staying safe!

We walked to an opening at my work tonight (about a 1/2 mile away), and on our way home we saw 2 fender benders. We were happy to settle in for the night and have no plans to drive in the near future. I took this pic through my back screen door around 9 pm. There seems no end in sight…

I’m anxious to see what it will all look like in the morning.

So what’s a newlywed couple to do on a Friday night, all snowed in? Get crafty of course. Tonight’s activity brought me right back to my childhood.

Making homemade play dough

My mom used to make this stuff a lot and while I remember playing with it, I don’t remember ever helping with the process of making it. Joe has no memories of homemade play dough so this was all new to him. I think he was a bit fascinated by it.

The recipe was easy enough: 2 cups flour, 2 cups warm water, 1 cup salt, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon cream of tartar. They all cooked together on the stove going from creamy to lumpy to clumpy. We dumped the mix onto a piece of parchment paper and kneaded it into smooth, elastic dough.

It smelled and felt just the way I remember: very salty and very soft. But we couldn’t leave it plain white, of course.

We separated the dough into 4 balls, dropped in the food coloring, and got to work on kneading in the colors. Unfortunately I’d used up all the yellow last year making my Steeler cake for the Super Bowl so we were unable to make yellow or orange.

I got a bit ambitious with the red and at one point my hand looked bloodied up.

Eventually the colors all blended together nicely and we had four brightly colored balls of dough.

Joe and I each got to work on our scenes and characters. I went with an animal theme and Joe went in a bit of a different direction.

Here’s some of my creatures:

I ended up with a pig, a frog, a rabbit, and a collapsed tree. The pig and the frog were my favorites.

Joe had more of a complete scene, which he carefully crafted. I continue to be amazed by his creativity and interest in these types of projects. He’s an artist at heart, I believe.

He ended up with a complete scene of a fisherman, a pond with three fish, and a lovely tree with lots of tiny leaves. I was quite impressed.

When we were finished Joe got up to do the dishes and I stole his tree and worked on a little addition.

Cue the sappy music and “you two make me sick” remarks.

Not your typical way to spend a snowed in Friday night, but we had a good time.

It’s now 10 pm and Joe just told me “It looks absolutely INSANE outside.” He’s right, it’s actually starting to get a bit surreal, I’ve never seen so much snow here in the ‘burgh. And we didn’t stock up on anything at the grocery store… thank God for that cheesecake!!

See you soon!