Salt Dough Ornaments

I have really fond memories of elementary school around Christmas time.  I remember lots of homemade ornaments whether it was glittery pinecones, crayon colored angels, pipe cleaner candy canes, or salt dough ornaments.  I loved every minute of it and I've often done crafts or activities with Grant I used to do in school.  I love homemade ornaments and every year when we decorate my mom's tree we still pull out some of those ornaments we made in first grade and it brings back so many memories. 

When we decorated our own tree this year, I was so excited to see our ornaments since we haven't gotten them out in about 2 years because of the time we were living with my mom.  I pulled out Grant's first "school" homemade ornament (actually it was from daycare but it reminded me of some of the ones we did in school).  It was made of foam, glitter, his picture, and had his name on it and I want my tree full of little ornaments like these so 20 years from now I can pull them out and reminisce about these years that will fly by. 

This year I really wanted to do salt dough ornaments with him.  I thought he was finally old enough to help with the majority of the process and could use cookie cutters and paint to decorate them easy enough.  Here's the recipe I used:

1cup salt
1cup flour
1cup water (add just enough to make the dough stick together and not be overly sticky)
-mix the flour and salt.  Slowly add in the water until it's the right consistency.  Knead the dough then roll it out and use cookie cutters to cut your shapes.  bake at 300 degrees for an hour or more depending on the size and thickness of your ornaments.

We used a star, heart, reindeer, and circle cookie cutter for the majority of the ornaments.  Then I decided to make one onesie shaped ornament to decorate for the new baby.  Since I didn't buy any pregnancy or "baby on the way" ornament I thought this would work great. 

I'm actually pretty pleased with how the onesie turned out.  It's far from perfect and I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted it to say so I decided to keep it simple and just put, baby #2, on the front with the year.

I had Grant use washable Crayola paint.  I read online to only use acrylic paint because others would eventually chip off., but I had visions of acrylic paint all over his clothes, pants, and my dining room chairs and decided it wasn't worth it.  Once they were done I thought I probably should have only given him one color of paint per ornament instead of small amounts of 4 different colors because of him mixing all the colors together rather than using them one at a time.

I had him hang one Rudolph on the tree and took the others and hung them from a shelf in our dining room.  I also had him do a handprint and used acrylic paint on it.  I've been wanting a painted salt dough handprint of his since he was born and as sad as it is, it's taken me 3 year to do it. 

I kept it simple and decided not to go full Christmas theme with it since I don't think I will put it away after the holidays.  I enjoy looking at his cute little hand hanging on my wall and he loves showing it to anyone who comes into our home.

After having made all these Grant is still asking me when we can make more.  I think he really had fun and I can't wait to do this again next year.