Welch's Grape Juice = natural tie dye fun!

Kieran and I were very excited when I was selected to take part in Mom Central's Welch's 100% Grape Juice blog tour. We immediately started thinking about how we could use grape juice in a creative way as part of the "Paint It Purple" tour. Because Kieran is such a tie dye fan, we decided to try to use grape juice to tie dye some shirts!

Getting the supplies ready

 

Putting rubber bands on his shirt

Dipping in the grape juice

The finished products!

To dye shirts with grape juice, we soaked them in a pot of 4 cups of water and 1/2 cup salt (as a fixative), set to simmer for 1 hour. Then we put the shirts in the grape juice. They didn't end up having as much of a tie dye effect...I think because we soaked the shirts in the dye for awhile instead of selectively dipping pieces of them. Instead, they ended up coming out a beautiful lavendar color. Kieran wore one to school yesterday (which I made for Nick), and the second one to school today! He felt a real sense of accomplishment and novelty about wearing a shirt he'd dyed with grape juice, and he told anyone who would listen!

We've always loved the taste of grape juice, and Kieran slurped it up with a straw out of the pot while we were dyeing the shirts!

Welch's Grape Juice has a number of great tools, such as a Grape Science Center, with loads of information about cardiovascular, cognitive, and immune system health. You have probably heard about the role Concord grapes can play (red wine or grape juice) in keeping the heart healthy, but did you know that polyphenols, like those in the Concord grape, may have a beneficial effect on some aspects of memory and learning. Emerging research indicates that consumption of Concord grapes might even slow down age-related cognitive decline in older adults.

To celebrate National Nutrition Month and help people determine their family health history and communicate effectively with their physicians, Welch's has created a "Family Vine" tool, on which you can record your family health history and receive a printout to share with your physician. It allows you to enter your family's specific health information, while protecting your privacy (you do not need to save any information on the internet, but you can save it to your hard drive). You can also go into the tool and update your family's health history over time. I've never seen a health communication tool like this--it's impressive. You can find more information about Welch’s health tools on Twitter: @Welchs and Facebook.



If you and your family love grape juice in any form, check out Welch's recipe box for fresh ideas. I'm salivating just reading through them. The one I most want to try is the roasted root vegetables recipe!

*I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Welch’s and received a product sample to facilitate my review and a gift code to thank me for taking the time to participate.