Olympic Pizza & Olympic Flags

From the time I was a little girl I've always adored the Olympics. My husband's a huge fan too and the kids have picked up on the energy as they've counted down the days to the opening ceremonies. With that much excitement flowing through our house of course I had to come up with a fun way to make a party out of tonight. Olympic Pizza was my answer!

I was going to make some pizza dough from scratch, which really isn't hard if you have a bread machine. Just dump the ingredients in the machine, turn it on, and come back and hour and a half later and you've got dough! But I spent too much time at the park with a friend, and so I stopped by the store on the way home and picked up some refrigerated pre-made roll dough. First divide the dough into 5 equal parts. Roll them out into a tube.

Connect the ends of each tube making a circle.

Place on cookie sheet in the shape of Olympic rings, 3 on top, 2 on bottom.

Now (this was my kids favorite part) smoosh the dough flat.

Cover with mozzarella cheese and bake according to package directions. Voila! When done serve with pizza sauce to dip it in.

The flags are such a big part of the parade of nations which made me think that the kids would like a flag of their own to wave while watching it. I started with a piece of off white canvas. I was going to hem it, but that seemed like too much work. So I just cut it with some pinking shears. It's approximately 6"x9".  I drew the Olympic rings on it with pencil, tracing around the base of a small glass to make a good circle.

The kids then painted their flags with fabric paint.

After the paint dried I hot glued a bamboo skewer to the backside of the flag, hiding the pointy side inside the folded over part of the fabric.

It all was a huge hit! The kids ate more of the pizza than they do when I make it the regular way. And the flags provided much entertainment for them, and I'm sure will continue to be waved enthusiastically the next several days.