Make It Monday: Christmas Dough Ornaments

This was week number 2 for Christmas ornaments. Really though, can you ever have enough homemade decorations hanging on the tree? (My opinion might change in a decade or so!) It's fun pulling things out of the box and seeing how the kids' abilities increase over the years. They feel a sense of pride knowing that they made them.

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
1 1/2 cups warm water

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
2. Mix flour and salt well. Gradually add water, stirring with a large spoon. Finish mixing with hands. Knead until soft and pliable.
3. Roll out on floured surface about 1/8 inch thick. Cut shapes with cookie cutters. Place on cookie sheets. With a toothpick make a hole in the top of the ornament for threading string. Bake at 250 degrees F until hard, about 1 1/2 hours. Decorate with paint and varnish to preserve.

We made half a batch for the two of them. We added a bit of cloves and cinnamon to the dough in hopes that it would give us scented ornaments. It made the house smell wonderful, but you can barely smell it on the ornaments.

Alyssa made the dough.

Jake rolled it out.

They both enjoyed cutting out the shapes.

They rolled it out and cut it, and rolled it and cut it, and rolled it . . . . and eventually just played with the last little bit while the "cookies" were baking. Rarely are children patient enough to wait for freshly baked cookies. It was so much worse this time, since they had to wait for them to completely cool before they could start painting.  They asked every few minutes, "Are they cool now? Are they cool? Can we paint them now?" 

They matched the paint brush colors to the paint colors. They are so my kids.

Glitter!

Our Little Artists

He did very well making stripes.

They had so much fun painting their ornaments! While the paint was still wet, they sprinkled on glitter. They each had their own paper plate to paint on. This way, all the paint and glitter was contained in one place instead of all over the table and floor. Plus, they enjoyed painting the plates once the ornaments were done. Double bonus. Once they were dry, we glued on various beads and embellishments. I covered them with polyurethane and added a string to the top.

Merry Christmas!

After they were all done, Jake said, "We need to put our name and date on it." It's a good thing I have him around. I just may have forgotten that part.