Mini Piñatas Break up the Holiday Weekend Doldrums (Milkshakes and Margaritas

what our kids are reading now

The adventures of Samuarai Jack has been great fun to read. The series is about, an evil shape-shifter named Aku from the distant past that has brought destruction upon the land. Jack is a heroic warrior in a quest to return to the past and undo the evil wrought by Aku. ~ d
Dillon has been loving “The Monster Show” for weeks. It is a cute “tell all” about monsters... did you know that monsters feel silly only wearing underpants? Little D (3) now reads it back to me and it is the cutest thing ever. ~d
This is a great little series of books about trucks, fire engines, digger and other machines. Dillon reads these over and over again. The have cute illustrations, bright colors and they are about machines — what little boy wouldn't like! ~d

ABOUT US

Milkshakes and Margaritas is a daily website dedicated to all things kid and parent related, run by San Francisco-based moms, Tanya Schevitz & Danielle Gutherie.
Tanya is the mother of 2 boys, and a writer for several publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle. Danielle also has 2 boys and is a partner and designer in the SF based design studio — the Vega Project.

Every week we will be sharing things we've learned, giving tips on parenting and life, recommending products we love, interviews with successful moms, and more.
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Mini Piñatas Break up the Holiday Weekend Doldrums

This weekend we made festive Mini Pinatas with the kids. This project takes a couple of days, but it was nice to stretch out the fun over the long weekend. These would be great decorations for a little garden tea party, or as favors for a birthday party.

What You’ll need

small balloons

newspaper cut or torn into small strips

glue (for both the mix and decorating)

flour

water

tissue paper or other things to decorate with

heavy gauge string or twine

The 1st step was to blow up the balloons. We made ours about the size of a small cantaloupe. But even smaller would be cute too.

Next, make the papier mache paste. (see recipes here - we used the no cook). Drag the newspaper strips through the paste and layer onto the balloons. Smooth over any rough edges as you work. Wipe off any excess paste with your fingers. Continue until you have the balloon covered, except for a small opening at the top. Let them dry at least 24 hours.

The next afternoon, we decorated... a couple were still a bit wet, so we dried them with a hair dryer. (Trick we learned - pop the balloon first and blow the warm air in through the top hole so the pinata keeps its round shape.)

We had multi colored tissue paper, and each of us did something a little different with them. Cash and Tanya balled up the tissue and glued it on, Dillon and I glued the tissue like streamers, and Liam covered his pinata with flat tissue, and then made a neat little pattern with tissue balls. You can see the results below.

We filled them with non candy treats like peanut butter sandwich crackers and mini packs of goldfish and fruit leather. We decided to leave our tops open and created a little hanger by punching two holes on either side and stringing red twine through the top. We used mini clothes pins to hang them on the string. Dillon was the first to go at them.

We initially had to convince the kids that it would be fun to stick their hands in the goopy paste. But they quickly got into it, save a little whining about dirty hands. Ironic since they had just been digging in the dirt for bugs! But once we got going, they had a good time. And they all got excited crumpling up the tissue paper into different sized balls. BTW - what’s up with kids these days?When we were kids we loved to get dirty.

Posted at 04:38 PM in projects | Permalink