I absolutely love the Christmas holiday. All the wonderful lights, decorations and music brings me so much joy. When I was little, I remember thinking that Christmas couldn’t be any better. Boy, I was so wrong. Christmas with my husband and children gets better every single year. What I appreciate the most are traditions and building those traditions with my family. One thing we love to do together is make our own Christmas ornaments. Last year we did Advent ornaments from Sally Loyd Jones that went along with her Advent calendar.
This year, I wanted to pull out an old tradition that we did a couple of years ago. DIY Salt Dough Ornaments! Easy to do and fun for kids and adults. First thing you will need is a good salt dough recipe. Pinterest and Google are full of them, but I prefer this one. Once you have assembled all your ingredients {did I mention there are only three}, you just mix them together and knead away.
I couldn’t find the metal cookie cutters we used years ago {they may have gotten lost in the move}, so I purchased these plastic ones and thought they would do well. I was wrong {my first mistake}. Each kiddo picked out a red cookie cutter to cut out their ornament, but it was not an easy task for them. Tears started coming and frustration set in. Each child managed to get one ornament cut out and I brought out a metal star cookie cutter and let them cut out a bunch of stars. It was so much easier than using the plastic ones, but the stars were really small. I preheated the oven, put the ornaments on the baking sheet, and popped them in. I let them ‘cook’ for about two hours. When that time was done, I pulled them out and on top they looked done, but when I turned them over, they were still doughy. The kids could not paint them and again, tears and frustration set in.
I was upset; kids were upset; I felt like a failure. I kept wondering what went wrong. I don’t remember the salt dough ornament recipe giving me problems years ago. Maybe it was my oven? Who knows. All I know is that my kids were upset and so was I. So, you can say I did it the ‘easy way,’…. I loaded the kids in the van and took them to Hobby Lobby. I told them they each could pick a new ornament to put on the tree this year, and they did and they had so much fun doing it.
Each one of them picked an ornament that they currently love and obsess over. Child #1 picked out an Xbox controller; Child #2 a sloth; Child #3 a monster truck; and Child #4 a Peppa Pig. It wasn’t exactly the kind of memory I wanted to make with them, but it was a big learning experience for me. Not everything will go as planned for the holidays. You may mess up a simple DIY project, but it’s not the end of the world. Look on the bright side, there is always a Hobby Lobby {or Target, Michael’s, JoAnna’s etc} to help you out!! And if you still want to do DIY ornaments, I suggest trying the recipe above and let me know how yours turned out, or you can purchase ones already pre-packaged for you. I know that Hobby Lobby carries them.