Salt Dough Ornaments

 Salt dough ornaments. They are all over blog land, but it's good. This is actually a new tradition for us. I remember painting plaster ornaments with my cousins when I was younger. As a mother, I look back on that memory and think, genius! I was a high schooler and my cousins were aged 1-7 years. My aunts just got a free babysitter for a couple of hours because I enjoyed painting!

 Salt dough is way cheaper then the plaster ornaments at the store. In fact, I bet you have the ingredients in your pantry right now. All you need is 1/2 cup of salt, 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water. Mix it all together, roll out and cut! Don't forget to put holes through them before you bake them, to hang them up. Bake at 200 degrees for 2 hours.

 Then you can paint them! I've seen bloggers grab glue and sequins. Grab whatever you have in the house. We used Crayola Kids Paint and watercolors. I like the watercolors the best. The Crayola paint cracked when it dried. I liked the watercolor for Kora to use, lot less messy. She enjoyed painting, as you can see her concentrating with that tongue out. Then she tried to eat it.

 It's kind of an all day process. The kids helped out a lot and enjoyed every bit. The cutting out worked on motor development. It was actually hard for Brooke to push down on the cookie cutters due to the weakness in her muscles. It was nice to see Kaden cutting out the dough and transferring the cookies to the sheet. He really is growing up. (sigh)

Brooke sure did love the painting part of it. I love how she has it on her forehead. I actually didn't really get to paint. Making sure 3 kids have something in front of them to do is a juggling act. I guess my expectations were kind of high, I know better. I can barely sit down for lunch, just to get back up because someone wants more or is all done.

 I think they turned out great! We put ribbon through them and hung them on the tree. Kaden was really excited to hang up his ornaments. He wanted to hang them all up! We didn't have enough room on the tree. I would also like to see SOME of the ornaments we've collected through the years. The rest of the ornaments are sitting in a bowl, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. I'm thinking of using them as gift tags?

 Our pink Christmas pterodactyl. He is my favorite. Holiday tradition, check.

 Here are some sites to visit for salt dough ideas. I think I'm going to do hand prints next, when things slow down.
-Hand prints
-Lots of DIY ornaments
-Gluten free salt dough ornaments!