Make Life Lovely: How to Make DIY Treasure Stones

I remember watching PBS as a child, and being so excited when the husband and wife "Kid Concoctions" team were on sharing their recipes during PBS pledge weeks. They made fun DIY crafts and projects like these fun treasure stones that I made for my son's jungle safari birthday party. I am so excited to share these with you!

I think their recipe is just brilliant! I'll show you how to make the regular version first, and then show you my unique twist on it that I made for the party. I've gotten some emails asking for the recipe, so here you go!

This recipe is similar to making play dough, but you can bake different toys or coins inside of the dough balls, and when they come out of the oven they are hard and look like stones. They can easily broken by kids, though, who love to find a surprise inside waiting for them!

This craft is perfect for a dinosaur party (as the stones can be dinosaur eggs), a pirate party (as cannonballs), or can be adapted to fit any kind of party, really! You can let the kids go on a hunt in the yard or house for the treasure stones (like I did for the jungle safari party), or just give them out at the end of the party as a party favor. Either way, kids (and adults) of all ages will love breaking open their toys and seeing what's inside! The recipe can easily be doubled or tripled to make more for a party or for friends.

Treasure Stones Recipe: (Makes 3-4 stones)

1 cup flour
1 cup used coffee grounds (I get them for free from Starbucks since I'm not a coffee drinker)
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup sand (I've used sand from the beach, the playground, and cornmeal when I didn't have any sand- they all worked great!)
3/4 cup water
Small toys and prizes- marbles, plastic animals, fake or real coins, and play jewelry are great choices!

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Combine all of the dry ingredients, and then slowly add in the water and stir until the mixture becomes a dough. I mixed up the dough in my Kitchen Aid, but you could also use a mixing bowl and a spoon. Every time that I have made this recipe, the dough is a little bit too wet, so I just add extra flour or sand (or cornmeal) to get it to the right consistency. You want the dough to be nice and firm, not too wet.

2. Roll a piece of dough into a ball, add the toy to the middle, and then roll back out the dough with your hands so that it forms a nice smooth ball. Place in the oven and bake for 45 minutes. Be sure to let them cool before letting kids break them open.

Now would you like to see the unique twist I gave these for the jungle safari party? I had my little guests all wearing jungle explorer tags, so I let them go on a hunt around the "jungle" looking for elephant dung "specimen" to do scientific experiments on, haha. A few of the kids really thought they'd be handling poop and were very concerned, but after I promised them that is was just dough with a toy inside, they were game!

I made the dough a bit more wet for this party so that it flattened out when it baked and looked more realistic. I hid the "elephant dung" all over the yard- in the grass, under the plants, on the sidewalk, and the kids had to go on an expedition to find it.