Our New Tradition - Homemade Christmas Ornaments

We started a new tradition this year!!

I gave you a sneak peek for this project in a previous post.

I've been wanting to get the kids involved in making ornaments for a while now, yet all of the homemade ornaments I found online were either too complicated for my two year old, required material that I did not have on hand, or made from simple paper that would probably only last a year or two before ending up in the trash.

Then I remembered these salt dough ornaments I made for a previous project.

My girls love playing with play dough (I haven't met a kid yet who doesn't) so this would be perfect.

Mix together 

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt 

and 1/2 water

Yep! That's it! 

Three amazing ingredients that I bet you all have in your kitchen at this very moment, come together to make this fantastic dough that is not only safe for kids to play with but also safe to eat. 

I gave each child a lump of dough to play with and create their own beautiful ornaments. 

So are you still confused about what these are?

Jocelyn made these. The one on the left is Mom (me) and the one on the right is sister.

How CUTE is that!!!

The girls had a blast making these

We placed the dough on a cookie sheet lined with foil. 

I poked hole in the top of each ornament using a small straw.

While we were making them Jocelyn say's 

"Oh Mama, Santa is going to be so excited when he comes to our house and sees these hanging on the tree!!"  

I'll take that to mean that she really enjoyed making these!!

I was originally going to bake them but decided to set them out and let them air dry.

This took 3 days. A lot longer than I had expected. 

If you choose to bake them set your oven to the lowest setting.

How long they bake will depend on how thick your ornaments are. 

Keep a close eye on them and flip them about every 20 to 30 minutes until they are done.

Once the ornaments were dry I placed an old sheet over the table. Set out some paints and brushes and let the kids paint away.

And this is what happened when I took the paint away.

It was devastating!!!

I used so wire hooks to hang them on the tree.

They may not be the prettiest thing on our tree but the girls sure are proud of them.
Anytime someone comes over the girls insist on pointing out to them, every ornament that we made.
I have not gotten around to it yet but I plan on writing the date and the name of who made the ornament on the back before they get packed up.