Salt Dough Ornaments {Try New Adventures Thursday!}

Remember the fun little handprint snowmen ornaments we made last year? Well, this year I decided to continue our ornament-making tradition, but this time with salt dough ornaments.

Salt dough ornaments, pre-oven.

 Salt dough ornament dough is incredibly easy to make. However, there are several steps involved to making the ornaments and quite a bit of time involved (mostly baking time, but also the time it takes to decorate). The decorating time, however, is the most fun...and I've decided that I really don't break out the acrylic paints enough!

Squish and I got together with a two other mom friends of mine and their kids and we whipped up the dough together, punched out our ornaments, and started the baking process. Here's Andrea, focused on making imprints on a few of the ornaments prior to baking.

Here's the recipe/method that we used:

Salt Dough

2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
3/4 cup warm water

Mix ingredients together into a dough. Knead on a floured surface until you have a smooth dough. Then roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut your ornaments out. We used a straw to make holes for hanging. You can also get crazy and shape some of your ornaments by hand (see my wreaths and snowman!).

Bake the ornaments in a 200 degree oven for 4-6 hours. Once the ornaments have cooled completely, decorate as you please with permanent markers, pens, glitter glue, or acrylic paint. I used all 4!

My ornaments, post oven.

Andrew and I like to make an ornament for "us" each year.

Squishy's 2011 ornament

These were a blast to create and so easy to personalize. Have you ever tried them?

Only 3 days until Christmas! Despite my well-laid plans, the Christmas meal is not quite finished and in the freezer, my handmade gifts are not completed, and there is still wrapping to do! Being 9 months pregnant in December has been more tiring than I anticipated. However!! I refused to be stressed about any of it. Time to enjoy the season and our last few days of being a family of 3.

Me, laying on the couch, NOT wrapping presents

I'm 39 weeks pregnant today...who-hoo! Any guesses on when the baby will come or what his birth weight will be? For reference, Squishy was 3 days early and weighed 8 lbs 9 oz.
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Ok...link up your own adventures below for Try New Adventures Thursday!







P.S. I will probably be tweeting/updating facebook when I actually go into labor (as long as I'm up for that). I'm contemplating my own hashtag...#AliciasLabor, perhaps? Hehehe....

P.S.S. After the baby's arrival, much of my blogging will be focused on documenting our 1st days with our sweet new one...less recipes/tutorials. However, if you're interested in doing a guest post for Alicia's Homemaking during that time--let me know! :D (aliciashomemaking at gmail dot com)

Salt Dough Ornaments {Try New Adventures Thursday!}