A Creative Day In The Life Of Col

Greetings,

 

In a desperate attempt to keep me and my three year old interested in our busywork activity of the day, I cam up with such a cool idea.  He loved it and I loved it because it was a medium very different to the ones we usually work with.  When we moved to Australia (gosh almost 6 months ago) on our first grocery shopping trip I was faced with so many strange brands and really odd looking packaging.

 

How do you buy food in a foreign country? Do you buy the most expensive - it must be the best...? Or do you go with the cheapest - less money wasted if it turns out to be awful? I usually go somewhere in the middle, I am a real sceptic when it comes to home brands / no name brands but here in Aus it seems that Woolworths offers two brands one is their Home Brand and the other their Select brand, so far I have been really impressed with most of the select brand goods BUT ...... There are still some areas that I am just not prepared to budge .... things that spring to mind are Tastic Rice, All Gold tomato and onion gravy, Royal Baking Powder, and spray n cook. 

 

 

I didn't know how easily accessible these things were here in Melbourne, and settled for some strange brands when doing our first grocery shop.  Rice was one of those things that I purchased as it is a staple in our family,  it goes with so many dishes I make, but as said above it has to be TASTIC rice.  When my MIL came back from a trip to South Africa she bought me two bags of this treasured ingredient, YAY we could eat normal tastic rice again!!!  

This left me with a smile of note but also some left over (not mentioning brand names) rice! I thought of donating it to the cooking class at one of my daughters schools but with all the hygiene policies (we cant even donate old toilet rolls or egg boxes to school) in place I didn't even try, so Ben and I divided up all the rice into plastic bags and we put a drop of gel food colouring into each one and shook shook shook - this was a whole bundle of fun on its own! We made music while shaking and shook in fancy ways and silly ways and had a good laugh.

Our coloured rice, so pretty!

 Then we left it overnight to soak in a little in the hopes that when we used it the next day it wouldn't colour our fingers too much! I decided on a cold / craft glue for our project, it was very thick and didn't have good spread ability so i diluted it a smidge with some water, we applied it with a plastic knife.  I drew an outline onto a 260gsm piece of cardstock with a permanent marker, I chose an ice cream with big easy to fill shapes.  Ben applied a little glue to each section and then sprinkled on his colour choice of rice.  

It came out perfectly and he really enjoyed it, I had to giggle because true his boyish nature, half way through he decided that the lifting and placing of the rice needs a sound effect, so we had a crane lifting the rice ... he is too cute!

Ben with his [r]ice cream picture

So I highly recommend making yourself a batch of coloured rice, its cheap easy and supplied loads of creative fun!  Any questions ... happy to answer them :)

Oh and we have lots left over for another project, I am thinking glitter..... Christmas ..... hmmmm this could be a-whole-nother project all together.

Till next time keep Crafty