Daily Craft - Edible finger painting

Since it's been so hot recently, I've been hesitant to take the wee one to the park for fear of burning his butt on the plastic bucket swings.  This means I've been searching for indoor activities and finger painting seemed like a great idea.  Owen still puts everything in his mouth so I needed edible paint and, with this paint recipe from Growing A Jeweled Rose (who is a wealth of handy info for baby and toddler activities in general), I figured I'd give it a shot and make some potato paint.  When I first shared my plan with Husband, he laughed at me and wished me good luck, but I was determined.  I armed myself with some sketch paper and potato flakes from the dollar store, stripped off the baby, laid a towel on his high chair to try and contain the mess, and made paints in red, yellow, green, and blue.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first and needed some gentle encouragement, but was happy smearing the potato flakes around for a little bit.  He definitely tried to eat some, which I was anticipating.  Although I'm not quite sure he got the concept, he seemed to be curious nonetheless.  It pained me a little bit to admit that I probably spent more time cleaning up than actually painting, but I think we still had fun and I have a pretty neat (albeit lumpy) picture to show for it.  

If you are curious about clean up, the food coloring was sufficiently sucked into the potato flakes that it didn't make a mess and wiped up nicely.  The only bit that didn't wash off immediately was the couple of drops I got on myself when making the potato paint in the first place.  Overall, a success!  What are your favorite indoor activities?  We're always open to suggestion.