Comments (13)

By Mom Unplugged, July 28, 2008 6:48 am

Hooray! We managed to participate in the Unplugged Project this week! This week’s theme was flat.

My step-mother wanted us to make some “flat” stepping stones for a muddy patch of her garden here in Upstate New York, so I got brave and bought concrete, something I’ve never worked with before.

Our supplies were the smallest available bag of quick-set concrete (40 lbs - ugh!), a bucket that we wouldn’t reuse, a stick to stir, some old shoe boxes for molds, and an assortment of “treasures” - dollar store shells and buttons, glass stones from a garage sale, and pieces of a cereal bowl that we broke by accident earlier in the week:

I mixed the concrete with water in the bucket. My advice: don’t try to mix too much at once. It is VERY hard to stir. Next time instead of trying to dump from a 40 pound bag, I would scoop some powder into the bucket so as to keep the mixture small and manageable. You can do several small batches like this, mix it more easily and thoroughly, and save your arms!

We poured the concrete into the molds and the kids began decorating:

We let them dry in the garage overnight. Tip: to move the now heavy and floppy shoe boxes without bending them and messing up the wet creation I slid a rimless cookie sheet under each one and transported them to the garage without damage.

24 hours later we were able to remove them from the molds. They came out very easily:

And here they are! Aren’t they lovely? My step-mom is thrilled:

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What did you do this week for flat? If you joined in the Unplugged Project this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky below and leave a comment. I am still on vacation (until Wednesday), so I will try to visit, but can’t guarantee.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project is:

Rough

Hope to see you next week!