DIY Indoor Sandbox

One night recently, Grant and I had a date night. He gets to pick where we eat on our date nights and that is almost always Cracker Barrel. On our way through the maze of knick-knacks Grant likes to touch things. Things that are not exactly kid-friendly items. One of the employees there heard me asking Grant not to touch the ugly table-top fountain he was seconds away from dipping his fingers into and pointed out something he could play with. I am not a patient person when I'm hungry, but I humored her. It was this tiny sandbox with weird sand that played like wet sand complete with mini sand toys. He played, he thought it was great, and I entertained the idea of adding it to his Easter basket...until I saw it was $15.

This past Friday, Grant was home sick. Even when he's sick, he rarely acts sick so he always wants to go outside. I remembered something I had read on Pinterest that was a little like that mini sandbox thing at Cracker Barrel AND I had all the stuff to make it.

I found this "recipe" from Growing a Jeweled Rose on Pinterest and I had all the stuff on hand. Except a container for it but a quick search of my kitchen brought up my largest Rubbermaid container. I figured it would do until I bought something else.

Sticky Sand

• 5 cups play sand
• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup vegetable oil

That's it. You just put all those ingredients in a container and mix it up until it's all combined. It took a little elbow grease to get the lumps out. At first I was skeptical but it wasn't long until it looked just like the picture I saw and it plays just like wet sand. I got out one of Grant's cups and a spoon for a shovel and he happily played at the table with that for quite a while.

He only made a minimal mess with it but it was really easy to clean up.

Later on after his doctor appointment we went to Target to pick up some prescriptions (one of which he had an allergic reaction to that landed us in the ER Friday night) so I grabbed a bigger bin for the sand too. I ended up making a second batch of the stuff and added some sand toys we had in the garage. He pretty much thought it was the best thing ever. Saturday morning as soon as he woke up, he was asking to play with his sand box. Since I had the stuff on hand (minus the bigger bin) it cost next to nothing. The bin at Target was $6. The play sand you can find at a home improvement store, if you don't already have it, for around $3-$5 per bag. And you can make a ton! I'm so glad I gave this a try instead of getting the little kit we saw.

Saturday morning: Iron Man and his sandbox.

Source: Growing a Jeweled Rose