Saturday, December 15, 2012

New Holiday Traditions - Homemade Ornaments


It felt like a great day to start and finish a project. Even better it was an arts and craft project and I was able to involve the soon-to-be three year old. In all honesty, I do like to craft but time is lacking and so is patience with the soon-to-be three year old. This little project was just perfect. He helped with the ornament cutting and the painting.

 
I used a fairly standard recipe. I looked a a handful online and each was a little different. My biggest difficulty was figuring out the time. I choose the low and slow method so they would not puff up like cookies. So here is what I did:
 
2 cups Flour
1 cup regular table salt
3/4 - 1 cup water
 
Knead, roll on lightly floured surface and use cookies cutters for cutting holiday shapes. I rolled to about 1/4 inch think. Use a straw to cut a hole for where you will place the twine, ribbon or ornament wire. Bake on a cookie sheet at 300F until hard. This took about an hour for my ornaments. The time will vary depending on thickness of the ornament and the heat of oven.
 
When they were completely cooled, Clayton and I painted the little blank canvases. Nothing fancy, green, yellow, red and a little glitter. After they dried and the boys were in bed for the night, I took the project one step further and used some Mod Podge to add some pictures of the boys. I used a Sharpie, added the boys ages to the back and the year. Voila!
 
 
The ornaments are not fancy, they are homemade. They are treasures to remind me of the this year, the laughs we had painting and the lessons learned in placing ornaments on the tree. They are beautiful reminders of how precious family is. I'm already excited to put them on the tree next year and look back at the day we spent making them. Who knows, maybe this will be our new tradition? Making a personal ornament each year with the boys to add to the tree.
 
Do you have an annual holiday tradition that you look forward to?
Merry Christmas! ~mrs. c

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