Salt Dough Ornaments

You only get a first Christmas ONCE with each child, so I figured I had to commemorate it! I'm glad that she was born right after Christmas last year so that she is old enough to have a lot of personality and fun opening gifts for her first Christmas. I opted to do salt dough ornament hand and footprints for us, and then we did handprints for each grandparent. They're not perfect, but they are definitely made with love!

First step is obviously to gather supplies. I decided to do the recipe on my friend Kaydee's blog : The Sweet Life

You will need the following :

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup water

I threw the flour and salt together in a bowl and then added the water. I kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes, until it was like a big ball of play-doh, and we were ready to go!

I then rolled out the dough after laying a piece of parchment paper down on the table.

I tried to make them visually look big enough to contain her hand and foot prints, not paying any attention so perfect circles or the like.

Then came the hard part. Baby Wrangling!

 I wound up recruiting the help of my mother when Piper decided to be less than cooperative.

You have to press the hand or foot down pretty hard in order to make a decent indentation in the dough.

Here are the 4 of them I got from one batch of the recipe. I took a fork and poked holes in the top so I would be able to loop a ribbon through them.

After this was done, I placed them on a baking sheet, still on the parchment paper. Bake for about 2 hours at 250 degrees.

After they were cooled off, I took fine tipped Sharpies and wrote on the ornaments, rather than painting. I have more control with markers than I do with a paintbrush!

 I took some scrapbooking ribbon I had laying around and pulled it through the holes I made in the top and just tied it in a knot. And Voila! Done!

Please go check out Kaydee's blog for more cute holiday themed posts, including cute holiday nails!