Color Mixing in a Ziploc Bag

Here's our take on this project I've seen all over the mommy blogs, which I believe came from a spring issue of Family Fun magazine (of which I recently plowed through several issues at the library). These photos are from June, but I meant to share them earlier and forgot. The idea is to put paint in a Ziploc bag and use your finger to "paint" through it, mess-free.

Not wanting to waste paint when I knew there were other options, I instead poured in a bunch of conditioner that I had and wasn't using because I didn't like it. As is often the case, after doing this, I saw that another thrifty mom blogger had done something similar--maybe with lotion? I can't find it now.

We added another twist by making it a color mixing activity. First, Ninna played with it with just the conditioner:Then we added some blue food coloring, and she mashed and mashed until it was evenly distributed:And after playing with that for awhile, we added red food coloring: And she mashed and mashed again to get purple, of which I forgot to take a photo. This was a big hit, and so easy. You really don't need paint at all. You can use any kind of thick substance with food coloring added for color mixing. I could even see adding glitter or glitter glue to make it fancy.

Oh...and guess what? The clothesline has so far been a success for 24 hours! Ninna immediately strolled over to it first thing in the morning, before even snuggling on the couch, and that's a rarity. She pulled her clothes off the line and got herself undressed. Bojey, being the great imitator at this age, joined in immediately. They neatly hung their jammies up for tonight. Ninna ended up playing clothesline with it using her doll clothes for 45 minutes this evening, hanging and folding multiple loads. There's a new set of clothes hanging for them for tomorrow. I'm hoping to keep it in use for at least another 24 hours ;).