Posts Tagged With: Valentine’s Day crafts

Rose And Chocolate Play Dough For Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Mama Rosemary

Who doesn’t love roses and chocolate on Valentine’s Day?

Valentine Play Dough

Here is a fun, crafty way to share these two Valentine Day favorites with the kids in your life.

 

Rose Play Dough

rose play dough

Colored with beet powder and bedecked with silver glitter!

Ingredients ~

  • 1 cup of flour
  • 1/2 cup of salt
  • 1 cup of water (can substitute rose tea or rose-water if desired)
  • 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • about a 1/4 cup dried rose petals crushed a bit
  • about a 1/4 cup beet powder or powdered roses
  • 5 to 10 drops of rose geranium essential oil (how many drops depends on your nose!)

Instructions ~ Combine dry ingredients in a sauce pan.  Add the water and oil.  Stir together and heat slowly over low heat.  Stir almost constantly until the play dough sets up.  Let it cool to warm before playing, play dough right off the stove is hot.

Chocolate Play Dough

chocolate play dough

Ingredients ~

  • 1 cup of flour
  • 1/2 cup of salt
  • 1 cup of water (can substitute rose tea or rose-water if desired)
  • 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder, add more if needed
  • 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
  • 5 to 6 drops any combination of cocoa absolute and sweet orange essential oils, if desired.
  • Splash of vanilla extract

Instructions ~  Follow the instructions above for making rose play dough.

Double, triple or quadruple these recipes if making play dough for a large group.

 

Fun Ways To Use Valentine’s Day Play Dough ~

  • Make little “treats” for your child to hand out at school.  Wrap a small ball (or make into little hearts) of each kind of play dough in a plastic bag, tie with a lovely ribbon and add a little heart-felt note to complete the Valentine.  Makes a wonderful substitute for the sugary candy treats normally handed out this time of year.
  • Take a nice big batch of each play dough into your child’s school or to a playdate and let the kids enjoy.  Supply baby rose buds, cinnamon sticks, glitter and heart cookie cutters to enhance play.
  • Give a batch to your little one on Valentine’s Day, makes a great present.

More please….

Valentine’s Day Crafts:

Play Dough Recipes and Crafts:

Happily Shared On:  The Kid’s Co-op, Share It Saturday, Kid’s Get Crafty

Categories: Aromatherapy For Kids, Herbal Gift Ideas, Herbs For Kids and Mamas, Parenting, Play Dough, Playing With Herbs, Roses, Valentine's Day | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Natural Living Monday ~ Stop And Smell The Roses

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Mama Rosemary

I admit it, I have roses on my mind.  It is almost Valentine’s Day!  I adore roses, fresh or dried.  I delight in making tea with rose petals and hips; crafting with sweet little baby buds of rose; and making body care products with anything rose ~ rose water, rose petals and rose essential oil.  With all this rosiness on my mind I wanted to start this week’s wonderful blog hop with a little informative herbal tidbit about roses.  Of course Summer is a wonderful time to collect and use fresh rose petals yet even during the cold of Winter we can enjoy the bounty of roses by using dried petals and fruits (hips).  Roses are helpful for supporting immunity and lung health.  They bring a ray of happiness to folks feeling sad in the during gloomy months of late Winter.  Plus they are great for crafting with especially with kids who really love the little dried baby rose buds.

Rosa rugosa

Rose Petals and Hips

Rosa spp.

Roses, in their beauty, open the heart and speak of love.  Yet they offer so much more than meets the eye.  The petals are edible and are lovely added to salads, desserts and even made into rose butter.  They also make a tasty tea (use fresh or dried) that I have found to be quite popular with children.  All that deliciousness brings with it immune enhancing properties as well as soothing coolness for the urinary system, nervous system and heart.  The petals ease cold/flu symptoms and lung congestion increasing lung strength and vitality.  Roses are also helpful in cases of PMS and fullness in the pelvis.  Emotionally roses sooth broken hearts and aggravated nervous systems.  Rose hips, the fruit of a rose, are very high in Vitamin C.  They make a tasty sweet sour addition to teas and foods helping to prevent infections.  I love to soak the hips in apple juice until they are soft and use them as jam on my kids’ PB & J.

Roses are often heavily sprayed so be sure to use organic roses.

More please….

Valentine’s Day Crafts:

Using Roses With Kids:

Find this and more information about other amazing herbs in my Materia Medica section.

 

And now….

 

Welcome to Natural Living Monday where we share all our natural living tips, tricks, and fun ideas.

Thank you for joining us on Natural Living Monday!  I am excited to see the great things you have been doing to live a more natural, whole, holistic life.

Your Hosts:

Amanda from Natural Living Mamma

Katie from Nourishing Simplicity

Angela from Mama Rosemary.

Last weeks most popular posts were:

Real Food on a Tight Budget by Sweet Basil ‘n Spice

9 Ways to Waste Less and Save More by A Proverbs 31 Wife

9 Ways to Waste Less and Save More by A Proverbs 31 Wife

Five Sneaky Ways to Get More Coconut Oil by Slightly Steady

Congratulations on being featured! These amazing posts (and a few others) will be tweeted, shared on my Facebook page and pinned on my Pinterest boards!

Are you ready to link up?

From this week forward the list is in random order!

Here are the rules: Your blog article must fit these categories: sustainable living, homesteading, DIY, herbs, home-made body and skin care, real food (no processed ingredients, Weston A. Price Foundation guidelines are a good place to start to define “real food”), and all things “natural“.

Link back to this week’s blog hop post so that everyone can see the other amazing posts. It is just basic common courtesy.

Show some love! Go check out and see what others have posted. Share the hop and the posts you love!

Not required but I would love it if you would grab the button and share share share!

What are your best natural living posts this week?

To see all the wonderful posts this week and link up

please use “Click Here” below.  Thanks!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

Natural Living Mamma
Categories: Herbal Medicines, Natural Living Monday Blog Hop, Roses, Valentine's Day | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Roses At Preschool For Valentine’s Day ~ Rose Hearts

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Mama Rosemary

This simple hands-on project makes fragrant unique gifts for parents, friends and teachers.  Plus it fun!  How often do you get to mix lots of glue with something in a big bowl?  It is a blast to squirt and drizzle glue making patterns and bubbles of white glee!  And here is your chance to join in the fun.

What You Need

  • Dried Roses (or other fragrant plant material like lavender or even potpourri)
  • Glue
  • Ribbons
  • Bowl
  • Spoons
  • Wax Paper
  • Heart Shaped Cookie Cutters (or any other shape you want)

How To

Making the mixture

I did this with a group of kids.  We sat around the bowl together on the floor.  (Of course this would be easy to do with a child at home too!  And I am planning to make some of these with my own two precious girls before the big day next week.)  First put roses in a big bowl.

This is a great time to talk about roses.  Roses are considered to be heart opening and are traditionally associated with love and beauty.

We also looked at and read the Song of the Rose Fairy by Cicely Mary Barker.  Having collected many books and even a great little CD of songs about Ms. Barker’s fairies, I am always delighted to share this whimsical artistic world.

I let the kids play with the roses for a bit.  To smell and feel them.

Then it was time to add the glue.  Passing the glue and bowl around the group, I had each child squirt glue on to the roses.  They really enjoyed this!

You want to put in enough glue to coat the roses well.  Next stir the roses and glue up together.

Making the Shape

Take a cookie cutter and place it on a piece of wax paper.  Have the child press in enough rose mixture to fill in the cookie cutter.  If you want to hang you finished shape you can either make a hole in the mixture so you can add a ribbon for hanging later.  Or you can put a ribbon in when you are making the shape by threading it through the cookie cutter and pressing the rose mixture around the ribbon so that it comes out nicely on both sides of your shape.

While I had many heart cookies cutters with me, I also brought a bunch of other shapes for the kids to choose from.  We had everything from hearts, to a bunny to a rectangle!

The Final Product

Let the shapes dry for about 24 hours.  Then carefully remove them from the cookie cutter and wax paper.  Now you can add beads to the ribbon if you want!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Shared On: The Kid’s Co-op, It’s Playtime!, Kid’s Get Crafty, Share It Saturday

Categories: Herbs For Kids and Mamas, Lesson Plans For Preschool And Home, Playing With Herbs, Roses, Seasonal Herbal Crafts, Valentine's Day | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Blog at WordPress.com. Theme: Adventure Journal by Contexture International.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 418 other followers

%d bloggers like this: