Growing up going to preschool in Crescent HIll, I remember making Christmas ornaments out of dough with cookie cutters. (Not sure why I never thought of making them when I taught preschool.) This year I knew that I wanted to make cute ornaments for gifts but with all the ideas out there I couldn’t decide how I wanted to make them. When the kids and I were decorating our own tree last week and taking out the decorations I pulled out one of the archaic Christmas ornaments made by my brother Ted when he was probably four years old. Instantly I made up my mind! This little star ornament made out of salt dough with a little piece of ribbon tied through a small hole in the top has made it all these years and still gets put on the tree. Ted who is now grown up, is still remembered as a little boy every Christmas. When my kids smile hang it on the tree we all laugh picturing Uncle Ted as a preschooler a long time ago. The recipe for the dough is super simple I’ve made it a million times before just to make “play dough”. If you add a few drops of food coloring to it you can keep it in an air tight container and it is a super play dough, fun to make and fun to play with!

Salt Dough

1 cup of salt

2 cups of flour

1 cup of warm water

Mix all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl until fully incorporated.

To make ornaments, preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Take golfball size bits and flatten them out in your hands. Then place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and use cookie cutters to make cute shapes. Cut an inch of wire cord and bend it to form a U shape. Stick the wire into the top of your shapes. Place the shapes onto a metal wire cooling rack and bake in the oven for about an hour, or until the shapes are completely hard. Once they have cooled paint them with acrylic paints. When the paint has dried, spray the ornaments with a clear spray paint to seal them. Tie some ribbon through the top wire loop.

To wrap these wonderful creations I bought the white paper lunch bags at the grocery store and let the kids decorated them with water colors. We made hand print reindeer, star potato stamps, and traced cookie cutters with markers for some super festive gift bags!