Salt Dough Ornaments

I told you I had been blog-hopping lately and I saw these adorable and easy ornaments to make and thought it would be a great project for the kids and I plus they would be a perfect little gift for my husband's co-workers. I hand picked what kind of ornament shape so I could come up with cute sayings or stories with each one so it would be more meaningful to them as gifts. So here is what you need:

And here is the recipe:

SALT DOUGH ORNAMENTS

1/2 Cup Salt

1 Cup of Flour

1/2 Cup Water

Mix all ingredients together. Roll out on floured surface and cut out shapes with cookie cutters of your choice. Make a hole in the top of your shape by pressing the end of a straw into the dough. Transfer them onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 2 hours at 275 degrees. Allow to cool completely before adding embellishments.

It said to use a type of sealer - we had Mod Podge on hand so I just applied a thin layer to each side. If using Mod Podge do not make a thick layer, it goops up and leaves a chunk of glue on ornament that will rip the paint off if you try to remove (yes I know from experience).

Here are a couple ornaments that we made:

I also got this next idea from a blog and thought it was a priceless keepsake. I had my kiddos place their hands gently on the dough and made a faint outline with a pencil. Then they removed their precious hands and I cut out their hand print shape with a knife. Now we have adorable hand print ornaments to keep for years to come!

This is my son's hand - 5 years old.

And this is my daughter's hand - 3 years old.

If making as a gift you can make the wrapping cheap and easy too: I bought a package of small plain white paper bags and simply stamped on a silver snowman and "Merry Christmas" (they have some clearance Christmas stamps on sale at Hobby Lobby right now!! So check your local store) Wrap in one sheet of tissue paper and Voila!

Hope you are having fun making many memories this Christmas Season!

GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!

Christmas = Baking and vice versa. Am I right? My kids have never done a gingerbread house (mainly because they are still very little and don't understand my desire to make it pretty and let it sit to admire before eating it, lol) However we made a ton of cutout cookies in October for Halloween and Thanksgiving and with my son studying gingerbread men in school it just seemed the right time. I didn't want to attempt to make a homemade one (shocker I know) for the fact that it's so hard to get them flat and straight and that young kids aren't patient. I wanted a simple, quick and easy to construct house that the kids could do almost all by themselves. I found a perfect one at Target for only about $10!

It was great! It constructed so easily and even came with a building tray to set the pieces in. And the icing set in 15 minutes, enough for my kiddos to handle. I let them loose with the candy pieces and only decorated one half of the roof myself - that's it! They had SO much fun and I giggled at their corky designs.

You can't tell that they're proud can you? hehe.

I take that back. I piped the icing on the Santa and Tree cookie pieces that went in front of the house. My bad. Although I was thankful for those cookie pieces - it gave my kids something to eat right away and kept my pretty house intact for admiring purposes! (At least for a little while)

I added some powdered sugar to give it that "just snowed" look. So if you're looking for a quick fun gingerbread house to create with your kiddos check out this fun kit at your local Target!

Now I had to laugh because we read a cute book my mom gave us that night at bedtime however I was reading through some of my blogs I follow and someone beat me to the punch on sharing this adorable kids book so instead of re-sharing, I'm sharing her post instead! Hop on over to Brimful Curiosities for a great gingerbread kids book to go with your creative fun! Not to mention she has an even EASIER idea for gingerbread fun with your little ones!