Noodle Ice Cream

The kids' Grammy was in town recently and like most of her visits, this meant the craft bin would be restocked with some type of to-do project. I always know when a crafty activity is about to take place when my mom begins to pull random objects out of her bag like Mary Poppins. The project for this weekend was pasta coloring.

I’m pretty sure the last time I colored food was over two years ago so we were in major need of a pasta rainbow growing on our counter top.

[Few things are as nice to look at as a beaming pasta rainbow]

A couple weeks after the visit from Grammy we pulled out the multi-colored pasta and enjoyed a make with the neighborhood children. To stay true to the season, we made “noodle ice cream.” To do this we needed white round cardstock circles to mimic scoops of ice cream (I used a 2 inch circle paper punch), brown triangle shapes to mimic ice cream cones (cut with scissors from craft paper), white school glue, cardstock folded into cards to glue our creations to and of course the colored noodles to symbolize various flavors of ice cream.

The older kids had fun inventing their own new ice cream flavors and some of the little ones had fun digging their little mitts into the noodles while mixing colors.

Yum! The final creations looked good enough to eat; we didn’t however, the combination of paper, glue and rubbing alcohol was sweet on the eyes but probably not so much on the tummy.

To color your own pasta or rice you will need:

Uncooked pasta or rice

Rubbing alcohol

Food coloring

Zip lock bags and

Paper towels or old rags

Fill zip lock bags with rubbing alcohol and food coloring, one bag per color of course. (The amount of rubbing alcohol you add will depend on how much pasta/rice you are coloring. I like the liquid to just cover the solid, the solid will soak up much of the alcohol while it’s “marinating” if you use this technique.)

After giving the filled bag a good shaking you may decide to add more coloring if you want a more saturated look (especially with the purple if you are coloring yellow pasta). After shaking the noodles around for a bit, let them soak in the liquid while moving on to your next color. When your pasta is reaching the desired color, lay the pasta flat on your rags or paper towels to dry.

Drying time typically takes a few hours. Once the (now inedible) food is completely dry you can begin a colorful pasta collage or bag it up for the next rainy day.

Just Beachy

Thank you to those who were able to attend last months “beach in a bottle” activity. It was an eventful one to say the least. If you were not able to attend here is the recipe to make your own personal ocean from a 16 oz clear plastic bottle:

Step 1: Fill bottle with a little less than ¼ cup full of sand *

Step 2: Pick out 8-10 of your favorite mini seashells and add to the sand mixture

Step 3: Fill the bottle half way with pre-tinted water…not to dark as it will prevent you from seeing the shells and not too light because the sand could suck the color right out.

Step 4: (Optional) add a pinch or two of glitter and perhaps some fun fishy confetti

Step 5: Fill the bottle to the top with baby oil and you’re all set. Oh wait! I almost forgot; don’t forget to glue your lid with some high hold glue—we’re not mixing drinks here silly!

* I highly recommend forking out the cash for some high grade sand if you choose this as one of your ingredients for the project. Some of the bottles we created at the make became way too cloudy and mucky by using good old-fashion play sand.

One more thing, if you still have a few plastic bottles lying around the house, here are a few other projects I enjoyed making with my mom as a kid:

QUIET BOTTLE: Throw some light karo syrup in a bottle with a little glitter and sequence to keep the kiddies entertained for hours (or at least 5 minutes) as they watch the sugary syrup drip and droop in slow motion to the other end of the bottle as it’s tipped from side to side.

I SPY BOTTLE: If you have a handful of miniatures lying around, pop them into a bottle with some white rice to create an instant game of “I spy.” We have one we made with colored rice which works fine too. Remember, your miniatures don’t have to be doll house quality, think; penny, paperclip, button, small battery…or anything else you have lying around the house.

TORNADO TUBE: This one is great for kids of all ages. You will need 2 clear plastic bottles (you could go for the 2-liter bottles for this one), water, glitter, sequence, (or something of the sort) and a tornado tube, also called a cyclone tube or vortex tube, which can be found at your nearest teacher supply store or specialty toy store. In Denver try Timbuk Toys. You will fill one of the empty bottles with tinted water and the other ingredients of your choice. You will then connect the two bottle together vertically (openings together) with the tornado tube. Give your connected bottles a little twist and a tornado will form in a matter of seconds, turn it over and start again! You have probobly seen this trick but if not you can check out a video HERE.

Photography by Charissa Spendlove