{"id":2777,"date":"2012-06-21T06:10:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T11:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=2777"},"modified":"2016-09-27T14:51:37","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T19:51:37","slug":"diy-fun-ice-balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=2777","title":{"rendered":"DIY Fun: Ice Balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7082\/7390397202_0f61735b00_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0017\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Summer has officially hit St. Louis. The cicadas are humming (?), sunshine is shining, and the heat and humidity have crept up to the crazy level. As we look forward to July and August, our thoughts are on ice. Round ice!<\/p>\n<p>I thought it would be fun to somehow make large round ice cubes for the kids to play with, try to hold onto, and slide around the back deck. And so, though I wasn&#8217;t sure how it would turn out, we froze water balloons overnight and voila! Ice balloons!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here&#8217;s how:<\/strong><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.static.flickr.com\/8012\/7390394228_36b04bf91e_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0002\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Gather up a handful of balloons (any color will do, as you will be discarding the &#8220;skin&#8221; of the balloon once the water inside has frozen).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5325\/7390395034_01929e9a99_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0003\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Make sure yours will fit over your sink faucet, or you could get one of those special water-balloon-filler-uppers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5350\/7390395592_14da8f1424_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0008\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7080\/7390396038_435da0b419_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0009\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fill up balloons to desired size (we made different sizes to see how well they froze, but next time I will make some REALLY big ones and see how long it takes to freeze through!) and tie shut, being careful to let all the air bubbles out before you seal the deal.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5323\/7390396578_66554dc752_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0012\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Arrange in a small tub so that they aren&#8217;t too squished (they will expand as they freeze, if you forgot your physics). The less squished in they are, the more round they tend to turn out.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7082\/7390397202_0f61735b00_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0017\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Stick in the freezer overnight.<\/p>\n<p>The next day:\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7238\/7390398146_4f496bab34_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0024\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7242\/7390398662_e8da457d7d_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0027\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Remove from freezer and cut the balloon skin off the ice balloons, being careful not to cut little fingers! Also, if you have a baby around, be extra vigilant about throwing away all the pieces of balloon immediately. Holy choking hazard.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7097\/7390399682_dc255140bf_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0029\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5466\/7390400794_a959f77ec9_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0031\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7076\/7390402454_1fa7b04450_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0036\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5329\/7390402940_20d4eae1eb_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0041\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And there you have it! Your own collection of ice eggs or whatever you want them to be! We decided to play with ours outside in the water&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7222\/7390403534_b235006921_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0044\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7241\/7390403988_188d99ee45_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0048\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7094\/7390404656_1a838fe8e2_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0049\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.static.flickr.com\/8002\/7390405282_9a30e82ee5_b.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0052\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The boys practiced trying to grab the slippery things out of the pool, and once they captured one, they slid them around the deck, felt them with their hands, hit them around with sticks, and finally smashed them on the ground before declaring the experiment a success. And as easy and cheap as it was, I couldn&#8217;t agree more!<\/p>\n<p><em>Update: We made HUGE shapes yesterday and they turned out great! We tried some long balloons and they looked like submarines. The boys had a great time will all the shapes and sizes!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer has officially hit St. Louis. The cicadas are humming (?), sunshine is shining, and the heat and humidity have crept up to the crazy level. As we look forward to July and August, our thoughts are on ice. Round ice! I thought it would be fun to somehow make large round ice cubes for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=2777\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;DIY Fun: Ice Balloons&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,187],"tags":[69,75],"class_list":["post-2777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diy-fun","category-motherhood","tag-brothers","tag-ingenius-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12535,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/12535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}