Colored Shaving Cream: Pinned It and Did It

Well, time is escaping me again! In my post Pinned It and Did It: Vertical Clothes I had promised to follow up on other pins, namely Painting with Colored Shaving Cream. Instead, I shared about our Fun with Pipes, which I am happy to report is still fun to play with and entertaining!

Artists at work

Back to the task at hand...How was our experiment with actually doing the the colored shaving cream Pins?  Not so good.

In case you haven't seen the Pins, they typically feature a muffin tin filled with brightly colored shaving cream, or a rainbow mural on the bathtub wall supposedly painted by a small kid. Well, I was hooked and in my determination to not just pin things but to also do them, I finally made it to the store for the supplies.

Have you heard the rule "keep it simple, stupid (KISS)?" Well, the colored shaving cream idea breaks this rule on so many levels and while I am sure that the original pinners meant to provide a really fun activity for their kids.  However, I think they ended up with a really cute blog post and just making a huge unnecessary mess for themselves.

The Pins showed the shaving cream all colored like this.

Here is why I think it didn't go as great as expected:

1. The kids were happier squirting the shaving cream from the can than they were using it out of containers with paint brushes.

2. Food coloring= staining. Unless you are going to be "super serial" about mixing your food coloring and shaving cream, you will have bits of dye that you will have to work to remove later. I have also heard reports of stained tile grout from people who used the idea indoors.

3. We make more work for ourselves by coloring the shaving cream. I dragged out containers, paint brushes, shaving cream, sticks, and food coloring so that the kids could smear shaving cream all over the outside plastic toys. In the end, the kids were playing with the cans of shaving cream and using their hands. I easily could have left out the containers and dye and they would have been just as happy.

Cleaning his car wheels.  The car got a thorough detailing

So, why did I drag out extra stuff and do more work than I needed to? Because I forgot to Keep It Simple, Stupid!! I saw the pin of rainbow shaving cream and imagined the artwork they would create and the hours longer they would play with the shaving cream if it was colored instead of plain ole white. And I dreamed of how they would purposefully try to blend the red and the yellow together to see that it makes orange.

Instead, they just acted like kids with shaving cream. They played. They made a mess. They smelled great!

Having fun!

Yes, and that is my kid sliding across the table to smear the shaving cream. I told you they were just as happy using themselves!

So, add a couple of cans of old school Barbasol type shaving cream to your Dollar Store Shopping list and break them out next time you need your kids to be entertained for a good 30 minutes or so. It will be one of the easiest activities you do with them.

Another note.  If this was a Mythbusters post, the reason they are smearing the shaving cream onto all of the outside plastic toys is that I had heard it helps to get plastic cleaner. Each spring I have to clean everything that hasn't been used during the brutal winter months we have here in Florida (ha, yes, I'm kidding). So, I thought I would get them involved and combine the fun pin with this fun cleaning trick. The plastic stuff got cleaned, but I am not sure I can attribute that to the shaving cream.
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I will only share the original Pinspiration when its an idea I like/love, but not when its something we aren't successful with doing. For this idea, I do think the thought was very creative and a super cute idea, which is why we did it.  We did, however, end up with little flecks of food coloring on the plastic outside toys, and on the kids.  Besides, they had just as much fun with plain ole shaving cream, so why do the extra work?!?

Happy Pinning and Playing!

Source: happylittlemonkeystree.blogspot.com via Carrie on Pinterest

Fun with Pipes: Pinned it and Did it!

It's already starting to get hot here, and by hot I mean in the 80s and 90s.  In looking for some fun ideas, I remembered this Pin from Pinterest on making a Kid/Carwash:

Source: cometogetherkids.com via Carrie on Pinterest

When I coupled that Pin with a convo from one of my super-creative friends and a trip to Home Depot with the hubs, we now have the coolest water and life-size tinker toy set ever!

Yesterday's Waterpark Construction Project!

Here is what we have learned:

1. We used 3/4" pipes.  These are sturdy enough and yet the kids can still help manipulate them.

2. Make sure you get the right attachment to connect the hose to the pipes.   We got the wrong connecting piece to connect the hose to the pipe.  You need a piece that has no threading on one side and then the threaded "female" end on the other side.

3. Buy the "Contractor Packs."  We only bought a few pieces on Sunday to try out the pipe toy and see if we liked it.  I went back for more parts on Monday and found "Contractor Packs" of straight, "T", and elbow connectors.  These are packs of 10 and you basically get a connector or two for free when you buy these packs.

4. Cut the majority of the pipes a standard size. We decided to cut the pipes to 2' long sections.  By having the majority of the set of basically the same size, it is easier to construct different contraptions.   We have a few pieces that we just use at the end of pipes to provide stability and they are random short lengths.  We also left  the "carwash" pipe 4' long as it goes over their heads and we didn't want it to be able to break to easily above them.

5. Don't forget the end caps.  We forgot end caps the first day and had to rely on duct tape to close off the ends of the pipes.  (Duct tape totally worked, but it is so much easier with the end caps)

6. Don't glue them together.  The pipes stayed together well enough that we didn't have to glue anything together, which is awesome since now we can create something new tomorrow.

7. Spray-painting the pipes.  I painted the pipes that have holes in them so it would be easier to pull them out of the box as we create.  The paint on the ends of the pipes makes it just a bit harder to get the connectors off at the end of playtime, but otherwise has added some fun to our set.

My kids are 3 and almost 5 and have played with these pipes for two days in a row.  Although they cannot connect the pipes by themselves yet, I know its not going to take long before they are creating their own waterparks.   It has probably taken us about 10 minutes to set up the waterpark and then they have played with it for at least an hour each time.  We already had three pipes, and then spent about $20 on all of the connectors and another pipe.  Pipes are about $1.50 each, and we have a lot more connectors than we can use at one time.  Its good to have options, right?

A special thank you to ComeTogetherKids for sharing this great idea I found on Pinterest.  I have just spent some time poking around her blog and she has some other super fun ideas that I know we will need to try out!  Please swing by her blog or Facebook page.  

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