A pleasant winter weekend

Know what this is?

It's pink play dough. 

Yup, that's right, pink, homemade, cook on the stove play dough.

I'll put the recipe at the bottom of this moodling in case you want some of your own.

On Friday night, we were all in rather funny, cabin-feverish moods after a week of temperatures with windchills in the minus 30s and 40s (Celsius). Even though it had warmed up to -26, none of us wanted to go for a walk, so my two younger daughters raided the games cupboard and came up with Cranium Cadoo -- with no play dough. So I volunteered to make some... and we kinda forgot about Cranium altogether and had a play dough party instead. The recipe at the end of this moodling makes a gorgeous, soft, smooth play dough, not like the straight salt, flour and water stuff we made when I was growing up. The secret is in the cooking on the stove... it comes out of the pot smooth and warm and feels fantastic in your hands!

My girls decided to dig out the cookie cutters.

Here's what you get when you cross 

a teddy bear shape and an angel imprint.

And here's our family. Mama, 

Papa (with budgie on his head).

and three baby bears, I guess. 

Youngest daughter's creation.

You could say that our second daughter's play dough skills have evolved.

This guy looks like someone from out of The Hobbit.

We woke to a lovely fresh snowfall on Saturday morning. The sky was still dropping tiny flakes, so my love and I decided to go for a walk to our favourite viewpoint:

Edmonton in the snow...

One of the things I love about this city is that there are so many places in it where you hardly even know you're in a city. Kudos to the city planners who made the River Valley into a wonderful park space. We turned 180 degrees from the picture above and took the picture below.

Love those trees!

Walking down 84th Street on our way home, we ran into some of my favourite local drunks -- Bohemian waxwings, enjoying some fermented mountain ash berries... (the shot at the top of my moodlings at the moment is a cloud of them landing in the treetops)

A couple of them got a little too deep in their "cups"

and decided to take the easy route, enjoying the berries 

that fell from the tree. They made me nervous, 

flopping around on the edge of a busy road!

Move it, boys, don't you see the car coming?!

Not long after we arrived home, my sisters showed up 

and made some snow angels in our back yard.

The only unpleasant thing about this weekend was both my hubby and me coming down with head colds. So on Sunday, we took an afternoon nap while my lovely sisters took our girls to see the ice sculptures at the Legislature because Ice on Whyte was so busy...

It was a pleasant winter weekend, from dough sculpture to ice sculpture. 

Here's that wonderful play dough recipe I promised:

Mix together:

2 cups (500 mL) flour

2 cups (500 mL) water

2 tbsp (30 mL) cream of tartar

1 cup (25 mL) salt

2 tbsp (30 mL) oil

Decide how many colours of play dough you want, and divide batter accordingly -- this much will make four colours easily (I only made a half recipe on Friday, all pink, and it made two satisfying balls of dough). Put enough batter for one colour into small pot, add colouring, and stir over low heat until mixture forms a ball and is cooked through. Let cool. Wash saucepan and repeat for other colours.

Have fun!