Potato Stamp Party!

It's a Snow Day!!  So I decided to take a snow day from my Vitamin Series and write a more playful post.

Justin's buzzing around like a good housewife and cleaning the house - he made us breakfast while I got on the phone to reschedule my clients, and went on to tidy up the laundry room and the kitchen while I... played with Harlee and watched the snow and sleet come down.  And then he went on to tidy up the hunting room while I... played with Harlee some more.  Then I decided I felt bad for not helping him, so I looked around the kitchen.  "Hmmm..." I thought, "these potatoes have been sitting here since the last co-op.  We should get rid of them, we don't eat potatoes..."  But I felt bad for just wasting them.

Let's turn them into stamps and paint!

Obviously I'd just rather spend the snow day playing with Harlee than cleaning the house with Justin.  That's okay.  There's plenty of time to clean house when Harlee goes off to college!

Harlee sat up on the counter with me while I halved the potatoes.  I love that he's so aware of his surroundings - ever since he learned to crawl he's always been very aware of how high he is on something, like our bed or the couch, and he knows to stay away from the edge.  He sits on the counter every morning while we cook breakfast and every evening for supper, and anytime in between.  It's nice to have him right there with me so I don't have to worry about him if I'm in the middle of cooking, and he gets to be a part of the process.  This time he tried to eat the chunks of potato as I trimmed the halves into shapes.  I don't think he liked them too much.

Then we laid out newspapers all over the floor and changed our clothes, I squirted some acrylic paint on paper plates and we got to work!  He caught on quick and made a huge mess.  It was fun!


 Sorry I didn't take pictures of the process of creating the actual stamps.  I didn't want to interrupt Justin's cleaning progress to come take pictures!  But it's pretty self-explanatory, really.  Just cut the potato in half, and then trace out your design with a knife.  Cut around the design about a quarter inch to a half inch deep into the potato, and trim out the edges leaving just the design sticking out from the potato.  Then dunk it in paint and off you go!



Oh, but if you're doing letters, make sure you cut them out backwards... I made Harlee's name, and the H and A were fine, then I got to the R and realized... whoops... So I had to remake it and the L.  Luckily E could just be turned upside-down and it was still fine.  Wasn't thinking there!

Make sure you're wearing paint clothes!  Harlee's got several stamp imprints all over his pants now, and fingerprints all over his shirt.

We decided to make some keepsakes for the grandparents.  This is technically Harlee's first time unleashing his inner artist with paint.  He's no stranger to bath tub crayons and ink pens, but they don't make quite the mess paint does - that's way more fun!!





 And that concludes our adventures.  We snatched Harlee up as soon as he trotted his little painted body off into the living room, cluing us in that he lost interest in our projects, and dunked him in the tub.  He's now napping away in sleepy-town, and... I guess I should probably go help Justin finish cleaning the house...

Happy snow day everyone!