What a mess

I've decided to try to make a pinata with the kids. For four years, when I was in high school, we did a pinata each year in Spanish class. Of course that was over twenty years ago. I think we used a wallpaper paste mix for the papier-mache, but I don't have that, only flour.

N was busy playing games on the computer so J and I worked on it while K napped. I cooked up this nasty, pasty glop on the stove after looking over recipes in a book and on the Internet. Then I cut strips of newspaper.

J and I went out in the 90-degree heat with the paste, newspaper strips, and a couple balloons to put the first layer on the balloons. It was sweaty-hot, and my hair got in my eyes when I had glop all over my hands. I tried to get it out of my eyes with out getting paste in my hair, but I failed.

At first I dumped a wad of strips in the paste, but they pretty much disintegrated. I squeezed out as much paste as I could, and heaved the ball into a hole in the yard figuring it's quite biodegradable, and it shouldn't sicken the chickens if they eat it (disintegrating newspaper, flour, water, and a tiny bit of peppermint extract). We determined it worked best just to run one strip of paper through the paste at a time and when the balloon got really gummy, no paste was necessary--the paper would stick and soften on its own.

We got our first layer of papier-mache on our two balloons, and I hung them up in the yard to start to dry. It's so humid, I don't know how it will work. I'll bring them into the house later to finish drying, but hopefully they won't be so sticky at that point.

Now I'm sitting here with stiff hair from the paste. Parts of my jeans and t-shirt are crunchy with paste, and I have a couple itchy-scratchy patches on my arm where the paste has dried but I missed it when washing up.

J had the good sense to take a bath afterwards. I couldn't because K woke up. It was sort of fun, but I'm sort of dreading having to put two more layers of paper strips on the balloons. Next time I'll be sure to pin my hair out of my face. I think I'll wear an older t-shirt, too. The apron didn't cover everything.