Press Dough! Oh no!

I long for the days when the children's favorite shows were on Noggin and PBS Kids.  Noggin and PBS Kids don't air commercials.  Now that their favorite show is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic... okay, EVERYONE'S favorite show is now My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic... we are a family of bronies... where was I?  Right!  MLP:FIM is on The Hub.  The Hub airs commercials... a lot of commercials... a lot of the stereotypically awful children's commercials that involve every marketing ploy known to entice your kids to want everything they see.

We make it pretty clear that requesting something they've only seen on a commercial just doesn't fly.  We show the kids reviews online of products that seem so cool on TV.  The reviews almost always point to the product being less... WAY less... than implied in the shiny commercial. Fushigi anyone?  Occasionally though one product just sticks with one of the kids and he or she won't drop the desire for that product.  The most recent obsession was Risa's and Press Dough.  She really REALLY wanted to make sugar cookies like they had on that commercial.  The requests for Press Dough have been consistent for several months and were brought up at times far removed from the viewing of any commercials.

Wanting to honor her desire, but not really wanting to pay $20 for over-glorified Playdoh tools that would be used once, I came up with the next best thing... or rather, the original best thing... Playdoh tools!  Press Dough is essentially tools for dough.  Playdoh makes fun, colorful tools for dough.  We already owned a LARGE box of fun, colorful Playdoh tools.  After a spin in the dishwasher, they worked GREAT!  Risa and I had a fun time making sugar cookies.  We used a sugar cookie dry mix.  Divided in half and alternated between using the dough and keeping it cold, the dough worked great with the Playdoh tools.  We didn't dye the dough though that would be easily done.  We had a pleasant afternoon, saved $20 and satisfied her cookie making wish.  WINNING!