Soap Snowballs with a Surprise

As you may know, my kids are homeschooled, so really that means we don't ever "break" from school. I know it sounds like a drag, but I am vying for the title, "Meanest Mom in the World"! (I need a shirt that says that.) Actually my kids don't really know we are doing school some of the time. In fact, the other day when I was teaching my oldest daughter, Banana Girl, about price per unit in the grocery store, she said, "Mommy, if we don't hurry up and finish shopping, we are never going to get schoolwork done!" I looked at her and was like, "what exactly do you think we are doing right this very moment?" Of course she had no idea she was learning and I just smiled. While I'm not a fan of sneaking in kid's vegetables, I'm a huge fan of sneaking in some learning. It's a beautiful thing!

For our Christmas learning, we have been baking and wrapping and crafting. Banana Girl decided she wanted to make this crafty project from the trusty fave Family Fun magazine. They looked so sweet and snowy and will make the perfect gift on Christmas for the kids in our extended family. You could also keep the materials on hand for winter break in February. In fact, go ahead and pin this right now, get the materials next shopping trip and you'll be all ready for a snowy project, real snow optional.

Here's what you need:

• Ivory soap bars
• small plastic toys
• water
• cheese grater

I'll show you the way we did it and then what you should probably do instead! First, we bought WAY too much soap. We bought enough Ivory to keep us clean for a long while. I would say each soap snow ball takes about 1/2 a bar of soap, so you be the judge on how many you need.

The first step, is to grate the soap into shreds. As each bar of soap went in my precious Cuisinart food processor, I had a thought. I wonder if this will make my next batch of coleslaw taste a little soapy? I don't recommend the processor way since I had to clean (well it was my husband doing the actual washing) the processor about 4 times before the soap smell/taste came out - Ivory is some strong stuff! We actually ran the processor through the dishwasher first, which is the normal way we clean this appliance, but everything in the dishwasher came out with a thin film of soap on it!! Agghh, not worth the hassle, so in hindsight I'd say use your hand cheese grater.

Either way you choose, go slowly on the feed so you get shorts shreds of soap, not long strings. The shreds look more like real snow as you get farther in the snowball process. See what I mean...

Get the shredded soap in a large bowl, add warm water and mix up with your hands. With 8 bars of soap, we used about  7/8c of water. If you use 4 bars, then you'll need about a 1/2c. If it's pouring down rain around you, like it is here today, you'll probably use a little less because you don't want soap soup. The warm water should create a chunky, sloppy *but clean* mess. The Banana Girl LOVED it. I imagine my Sausage Boy would have enjoyed it as well. The good thing is, even if your kid is the one who won't put there hand in the pumpkin guts, this mess just rinses off and you are left squeaky clean.

After it's pretty well mixed up, squish some into a half ball - blob shape. This is a very technical step, so be sure it's in the blob shape. ;)

After you have a blob or glob if you like that better, put a small plastic toy in the middle of it, then pack more soap on top of it.

The idea is to seal the toy up so you can't see any of it. Then form it into a ball shape, packing it all together tightly. After you have a ball, set it on a tray and repeat the whole process until you are out of soap, trinkets or patience. As a sidenote, don't you just love the way little girl hands' look with the nail polish all chipped? What is it that makes this look so cute on them and so tacky on me?

Your soap snowballs will have to dry for about 3 days before you give them away or use them (again this depends on how much moisture is in the air). The tighter you pack and the drier the ball, the longer it will hold together when you use them. I pulled this one open to show you the inside after about 2 hours of drying time, it was still pretty wet.

We packaged ours up in cellophane paper with a wintery blue ribbon.

So are you ready to make some squeaky clean fun??? Remember pin it for later!! And I'd love for you to follow my pin boards, just click on the Pinterest link on the right (the big P). If you have no idea what I'm talking about, be warned it is addictive. The concept is a virtual pinboard to keep track of all the cool recipes, crafts, books, clothes, gifts, etc you see out there on the internet. Incredibly brilliant idea - just wish I thought of it!!