A tale of two projects

This weekend Jonathan and I were determined to do two projects with Xander.  I was going to do an art project with recycled construction paper.   Jonathan was going to build a rocket.

My project arose out of a need to be "green":  Xander is learning how to use scissors at school, and for the past few days has come home with little plastic baggies full of cut-up construction paper.  I wanted to use them for a good purpose, and for something other than the standard preschool collage.  So I found this site that explains how to make clay out of construction paper scraps.  I figured it would be a fun activity, and it would also piggyback on a Mr. Roger's special where Mr. Rogers and his neighbor take a tour of a construction paper factory.  Xander asks to watch it over and over.

The first step was to cut all the paper into even smaller pieces.

We needed lots of paper.

Next up came soaking the paper, for about 20 minutes.  This involved lots of stirring to make sure all the paper was wet.

We then transferred the wet paper into the blender, for a quick 2-minute blend.  At this point Xander instructed Jonathan to please take Ari to the living room, because "it will be loud.  Ari will cry."  (Xander then left to the living room too, so Jonathan held both of them.)

This part here is where it started to go bad.  You see those few pieces of green construction paper in the blender?  I had put all the colors in together.  I hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize that green paper + pink paper + yellow paper + red paper + orange paper = one very, very ugly color.  The final pulp looked disgusting.  The recipe told us to strain the water out of the pulp next... but my tidy child took one look at the brown mess in the bowl and utterly refused to put his hands in it.  So I did it instead.  His response, after I started to squish it?  "Mommy, your hands are dirty!  You need napkin."

Sigh.

But I was determined.  We plunged onward.  I got out all our cookie cutters, and we made shapes with the clay.

See the color?  Gross.  The shapes included menorahs, stars, hearts, dogs, and dreidels.  

Next we took our shapes outside to leave them to dry overnight, with the intent of painting them the next morning.  Jonathan then commenced his project with Xander: rocket building 101. 

Admittedly, Jonathan did most of the actual work, as it was pretty complicated, but Xander did love handing him things.  

Behold the finished product.  The best line of the night, after the rocket was finished:  "Mommy, Mommy, the rocket will go FAST!  Like MiniCooper!!"

Like the clay figures, the rocket was intended to be a two-day project as well.  The glue needed to dry overnight, and then today we were going to go to the park.  

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

Complete, epic, project FAIL.

It rained.

I didn't rescue the clay figures early enough in the storm, so they were soggy and couldn't be painted.

It didn't even matter, because it turned out the only paint I had on hand was watercolor.

That didn't matter either, because the figures looked so disgusting Xander didn't even want to paint them.

We threw the figures away.

Due to said rain, the park was out of the question.  So no rocket launching either.

Instead the rocket sat there on the table, tempting cats and boy alike.  Xander was not happy that we had to reschedule for tomorrow.

So what did we end up doing?  Why, we drowned our sorrows in FOOD!  

Yes, we went on a baking frenzy.  We ended up with one small cake, eight muffin cakes in animal shapes (I love this pan), and homemade frosting.  Xander was seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were making chocolate cake, and time and again requested "pink cake."  After dinner, when the cakes had cooled, we were able to satisfy that need at least: he put one tiny drop of red food coloring in the vanilla frosting, and it came out as pink as pink could be.

So in the end, the day turned out fine.

All hail post-cake cuddles!