Home Made Sidewalk Paint! (AKA too hot to do anything else)

  It is so hot here! So hot! It's been in +100 this week a few times, which is nothing like +100 back in the southwest. Today DB wanted to get outside, and I don't blame him, we've been cooped up due to the temperature, but he's too little to understand that there's a temperature point where even the most modern of playgrounds become scalding hot torture devices. I knew that even if he could stand the oven of a car ride to an appropriate play area, he'd only be outside for about 20 minutes before he'd be too red and sweaty to have any more fun, so I had to brainstorm. Front yard? Too steep, a hill of doom, if you will. Back yard? Too many rats, and the neighbors throw rat poison around out there all willy nilly, DB's not even allowed back there. Front steps it is. Now how to make the boy not kill my pathetic little grouping of edible plants? Then DB solves the problem for me with his typical 19 month old attention span. The chant changes from "outside outside outside" to "paint paint paint!" Bingo. I google. Trusty google. "homemade sidewalk paint" turns up way more entries than I had even hoped for. And they're easy, eco-friendly, and cheap. All my favorite words. So we mixed some up and had a BLAST painting our porch, steps, and landing. The paint was "all gone" (there were a couple spills/crashes depending on your fluency in car-obsessed toddler terminology) in about 20 minutes, just as my beet-faced little boy was soaking his curls with sweat. Here's how we did it:

Homemade Sidewalk Paint

• Cornstarch
• Cold Water
• Food Colors

  You want equal-ish parts of cornstarch and water. I found it easiest to mix the cornstarch and water in separate containers from the beginning as opposed to dividing it later. It tends to settle a bit no matter how freshly stirred it is, so this way they all have equal opacity. You can use more or less water to reach the consistency you want, ours was about like 2% cow's milk in appearance. The paint may seem very thin but that's fine, it may even look like you're hardly using a color at first, but it will brighten considerably as it dries and on a hot day like today it was drying very quickly. We went with about 2 Tbs. of cornstarch and 2-3 Tbs. of water per cup, and we did 4 cups of color. Add food color drops until it's the shade you want, I'd err on the side of a few more drops than you think you might need, the actual color of the dried paint will be more pastel than the shade of wet paint. DB picked Purple, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Take a variety of brushes out with you, and have fun! It can wash off with rain or you can spray it off later and it's fine for plants and animals and even tots, if they get some in their mouth. There is a possibility of staining, though our clothes didn't, so play in clothes meant to get dirty.