Piñata!!!

Kids love sticking don't they?  The girl would do sticking every single day if she could.  With the boy's birthday coming up, I decided to let them make their own piñatas.  I know everyone associates them with being donkey shaped, and sure, there are amazing ones in various Disney and Dreamworks characters for sale at Toys 'R' Us and Tesco, but we're just going to make some simple balloon-shaped ones - they are only two and three years old after all!  With a few little tissue paper tails, I guess we can pretend that they're octopuses, erm, octopii, erm.....  What is the correct plural of octopus anyway???!!!!

Armed with some balloons, old magazines, mugs and coloured tissue paper we were all set.  Of course we couldn't make the papier-mâché with wallpaper paste or watered down glue because they may contain edibles, so I mixed together a paste of 1 part flour and 2 parts water.  It doesn't matter if the paste is lumpy but I added the water a little at a time until it was smooth before throwing the rest in.  

The girl, being her usual tidy self spent ages covering her balloon and managed to do so without getting her hands dirty, but of course the boy got his hands in and dribbled quite a lot all over his clothes.... he is still covered in flour now!  We've done or first layer of magazines and they're sitting drying until after lunch when we'll add our next layer of magazines =)

What I did next: 

Plain piñatas? Pah!!!

Pretty painted piñatas :-)

Piñatas all filled and ready to..... destroy!