PUDDING PAINT BUNNIES

What a gorgeous day! Kinley and I headed to the front yard after our gourmet dino nugget and mac & peas lunch, to pick up the plastic eggs that had blown off of our Easter egg bush the night before and I decided, after being out there for all of two minutes, that there was no way we were going back inside.

I loaded the stroller, snacks, water, bubbles, and Kinley's favorite orange sparkly ball into the trunk, lathered SuperBaby up with sunscreen and buckled her up in her car seat, and took us directly to the prettiest park around here--Inniswood Gardens. I'm sure we will be back there every couple of weeks, so I will do a Big Adventure post about it once all of the flowers are blooming and the trees have leaves. It is just gorgeous and it's kind of a hidden gem. :)

It was the perfect park day--could it actually finally be spring?! We ran into a whole bunch of different grammas on walks too, and all of them mentioned how great it felt to be soaking up some sunshine. We couldn't have agreed more! 

Kinley's favorite parts were digging in the fresh dirt in EVERY SINGLE flowerpot and running in the opposite direction every time I wanted her to follow me. Oh, and chasing the bubbles and kicking her ball and crunching leaves with her tiny hands and seeing birds and listening to the water rushing down the little creeks and sucking all the salt off of her Goldfish crackers and then spitting them out wherever she wanted...pretty much the whole entire park experience. The most exciting part was definitely the dirt and the spitting, though.

She pretty much refuses to ride in her stroller anymore, so by the time we walked all the way back up to the car, she was exhausted. I handed her the emergency bink from my pocket and she was snoozing before we even backed out of our parking space. 

Perfect ending to a perfect outing.

So, I've been meaning to share this pudding art project with you for a couple of weeks, but we just got around to finishing it yesterday. Hopefully you can find some time to squeeze it in before Sunday cause it's a kid-tested winner and one of my favorites from my daycare days.

All you need is:

Sugar-free chocolate pudding (you can use regular, but it will be MUCH stickier)

Brown construction paper

Scissors

Pencil

Glue stick

Colorful paper scraps (we used scrapbook paper)

You can see my original stencil has been traced many times :) And I've never met a little who didn't love pudding painting! I did make a different bow this time so Kin could stick it wherever she wanted

Let the tutorial...(drumroll, please)...begin.

Don't forget to slap a paint shirt on your little artist, chocolate pudding is not an easy stain to remove, trust me. And make sure to have a wet washcloth or wipes right next to your art area before you start so you will be spared hours of scrubbing random chocolate handprints off of nearly every surface in your house.

Now, you are ready. Just strap your kiddo in their highchair or wherever you are painting, give them a piece of brown paper and a plop of pudding and step back. 

Kinley started by just dipping her lips directly in the pudding. She's been a little weird lately about touching mushy squishy things, so she figured she could just eat the paint without touching it...

but, it was just too yummy to leave it sitting on her tray, so she finally gave in and started smearing and shoveling it in her little happy little mouth.

I had Kinley paint two sheets so we could have two bunnies. If I remember right, you can fit two on one standard sheet of construction paper, but I trimmed her's to fit her high chair tray, so there wasn't enough room on our paper.

I left them to dry overnight, and here's what they looked like:

So chocolate-y, right? 

Then, I just traced my trusty old bunny pattern on the backs of both sheets and cut them out.

I cut out a couple of bows for the bunnies while Kinley was napping and when she woke up I let her be in charge of the glue sticks for the first time (she did great and glued responsibly) and stick on the bunny bows.

And, voila! These babies went straight to the last vacant spot in the Cabinet Gallery.

I was just thinking that I bet vanilla pudding on white or Manila paper would make really pretty white chocolate bunnies, too. And sugar-free vanilla would be even less of a mess than chocolate. We will have to try that next year. Send me a pic if you try it! :)

Tomorrow my mom is coming over to help us dye eggs and I'm hoping that it will be nice enough to do that job outside. Doesn't it always seem like the spring and fall only last for like two weeks and then it's either roasty hot summer or miserable cold winter for the other 48 weeks of the year? 

I don't know about you, but we are gonna enjoy every single second of spring weather we can. 

Happy Good Friday!