How to make the Greatest Playdough!

As promised, I will now share the secret of how to make my favourite playdough. I have found the secret for this recipe is constant stirring and adding the ingredients in the right order. I would suggest you use a heavy wooden spoon cause the dough gets pretty stiff towards the end.

Recipe for Anna's Amazing Playdough

1 cup warm water
1/2 package kool-aid (or food colouring)
1 cup flour
2 TB oil
1/2 cup salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions: Put water and kool-aid in to a medium sized pot. stir to dissolve kool-aid. Heat at medium low temperature. Add flour and mix well, add oil, keep mixing, add salt, mix well. Add cream of tartar and mix mix mix. As the playdough heats the cream of tartar will make it start to jell. Don't stop mixing, it takes a bit of elbow grease at this stage. When it looks like almost all the flour mixture has been converted to playdough, take the pot off the heat and let it rest in the pot for 1 minute. Squish it around a bit to make sure all the water has been absorbed. The playdough should be not be too hot to handle. If you over-heat it, the playdough will become stiff quickly, if you under-heat it, there will be goey sticky sections that did not get jelled.

Make all the colors of the rainbow if you want! Sometimes I add a little essential oil to make it smell more sweetly although the smell only lasts for one day.

Baby Bear Wipes - Making Disposable Diaper Wipes

I started making my own diaper wipes when my youngest got BAD diaper rash as a baby. His skin was very sensitive to the chemicals found in store-bought diaper wipes and I couldn't find a natural alternative in our local stores. I tried using washable cloth wipes but we don't have a dryer so the cloth wipes would get very stiff and scratchy after hang drying, and then there was the smell factor (phewwww!).

I've found numberous wipes recipes floating around, ranging from goat udder wipes to baby oil diaper wipes. I've fine tuned the recipe a bit and I now make and sell these wipes on my online store and at markets. I hesitate to call them "all natural", "chemical free", organic, or eco-friendly, cause many of these terms are being missued by corporations, etc, so I just call them "Baby Bear Wipes".

Baby Bear Wipes can also be used as a handy make-up remover, moisturizer, diaper wipe for sensitive skin, gentle alternative to chemically infiltrated store-bought wipes, hand and mouth wipes, emergency sponge bath, deoderant, farmers market table cleaner, you name it!

It may be difficult to find the exact ingredients I use so I'll provide alternatives in brackets (like this).

BABY BEAR WIPES RECIPE:

2 kg peanut butter jar, washed and sterilized

1 BOUNTY select-a-size paper towel, cut in half width-wise with a sharp knife and take the cardboard core out (must use BOUNTY, other paper towels will turn to mush, cut in half it will look like a toilet paper roll)

1 1/3 cup pure water (sterilize tap water by boiling for 10 min)

2 teaspoons phosphate-free dish soap (most biodegradable dishsoaps will work)

1 tablespoon tea tree bath oil (not essential oil, I used to buy bath oil from Melaleuca, am currently looking for an alternative)

5 drops tea tree essential oil

5 drops lavender oil (use any essential oil that will suit your needs best, rose, neroli, calendula, etc)


Pour all the liquids into the peanut butter jar, shake to mix, then squish the paper towel into the jar. To use wipes, pull the paper towel from the center of the roll (should be positioned upright in the center of the jar). It takes about 12 hrs for the wipes to absorb all the liquid evenly.

If this sounds like too much work for you, feel free to buy wipes from me! I also sell them at Earths General Store in Edmonton. I hope there will be many more happy baby bums thanks to this recipe.

Next up... how to make the absolute best most rocking awesome play dough ever, detailed recipe and hopefully some pictures of baby goats (although baby goats and playdough are not seemingly related)