Today was a long day. It was too windy for us to spend much time outside and the kids are ready to run free and wild, they don't want to be cooped up all day. So today was a messy with lots of activities. You know, the day were I spend more time preparing the next activity and cleaning it up then they actually spend doing the activity?

Finally, by mid-afternoon when dinner needed to be started, tempers were short, and my patience had left the building I had an epiphany. 

I saw this on Pinterest, although I don't believe I actually pinned it because it seemed too young for my toddler/preschooler, but it worked! It took about 5 minutes to put the paint into the baggies and tape them up and it led to at least 20 minutes of direct fun. 

The kids also went back to play with them throughout the evening. They were eventually removed and thrown away, I've cleaned up enough messes today to know that things would get ugly over here if I found an exploded baggie somewhere. (Hey, I'm learning my limitations!) So thankfully, with that I was able to get dinner made with much fewer interruptions.