Childhood Uncontained: Salt Dough Ornaments

My husband and I are starting a new tradition of buying each of our kids a new ornament every year. We like the idea of when they are grown and have their own families and their own trees, they can put their ornaments on it from their childhood years (we will only save some of them!) As I am writing this, I think it may be an good idea to do two ornaments for each kid per year, so I can keep some!

Since we are moving and grooving with our debt snowball, I decided to save the money and make ornaments with them instead. I found this super easy Salt Dough Ornament recipe from Shutterfly and they turned out great! Here are the common household items you need:

2 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 cup of water
tiny hands/paws/feet
paint and brushes
string
hot glue gun

Here are the steps below:

Mix the salt and the flour.

2. Add the water slowly, until you get an almost play-doh consistency when you mix it.

3. Roll it out on a floured surface, flattening it to about 1/4 inch thick.

(Harper decided to get in the Christmas spirit by scraping her nose on the sidewalk and transforming herself in to Rudolph to spread Christmas cheer... how thoughtful!)

It helps if you flour your hands prior to prevent the dough from sticking.

4. Use tiny hands and cut around them to shape the ornaments.

or feet...

or paws... or cookie cutters.

5. Put them on a cookie sheet and place them in a 170 degree oven for three hours.

While you wait for them to be done, you evaluate the mess...

...and let the kids play with the extra dough.

6. Once the ornaments are done, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool. Paint them to your liking and hot glue a string loop to the back. (The first ones we made were thick enough to poke a pencil through and string a loop through. The second batch was thinner so to avoid breaking the ornament I just hot glued some string on the back.) We used acrylic paint because that is what we had at our house.