Edible Painting

Just one more reduce, reuse, recycle post to share for now. Another way to reduce waste is just to use things you already have instead of buying something new. For instance, using stuff from the kitchen instead of buying art supplies. I wrote last year about how to carve fingerling potato stamps. Which is really fun and easy, but you can use any kind of fruit or vegetable, or even just left over scraps, sneaking in one more use before you compost them. We tried carrots, celery stick, celery base, and a broccoli base with red and yellow finger paint.

The boys had fun stamping in the paint. By the way, did you know that you can grow celery by just planting the cut-off base? I didn't. We are totally trying this. Check out how at The Burlap Bag.

As I looked at this, I couldn't help thinking those paints looked a lot like ketchup and mustard, which gave me an even better idea...

I raided the fridge for different colored dips.

I used food coloring to turn the ranch blue and the mayonnaise green.

I let Thing One use the veggies to do some stamping.

Then I gave him a tortilla and some basting brushes and let him paint a snack.

Since chocolate was on the palette, he didn't really agonize over the painting part, he was just excited to eat it. He did ask for more things to paint though once the chocolate was gone. This activity took up most of an hour, which for us is pretty long!

Thing Two also got a palette of edible paint, but rather than try to make it a disaster an art project, I just sliced a piece of bread into cubes and let him dip and eat all the colors. It sounds kind of gross, but I think he liked trying all the different colors and flavors, because he didn't really know what to expect. Hope your day is full of color and trying new things!

Thanks for reading!

- Haley

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