Salt Dough Ornaments

Hello Dearies!
Hope everything is happy and wonderful in your world. We are super busy  around here. My son has a new study group, the baby has early preschool, which is insane because he’s 1!!!! But I guess that’s how people do it now days. Daughter is in basketball and my hubby has volunteered to coach. Oh and we’re also doing the whole getting ready for Christmas thing because I volunteered to have it at my house. I honestly don’t remember the last day I had to just sit at home and not do stuff. I miss not doing stuff. Haha!
 Ok so first on my projects list is gingerbread houses. My daughter and her friends are making a whole village of these to be auctioned off. They are using the money to put together food boxes for families that that can’t afford the big Holiday dinners that most of us are used to. They are nine years old and they came up with this idea all by themselves (Proud mommy moment). I’ve never done gingerbread before so this is from a kit. One of the moms is amazing at this kind of thing so she’s doing all the baking for the actual house build party. My son didn’t want to be left out so we bought a kit to put together. It was fun and actually pretty easy. The kiddos loved it. They also ate it VERY quickly. I think this thing lasted maybe two days.
 
 The baking I did do myself this week was not for eating. We made salt dough ornaments. The dough is super easy to whip up and to handle. We used cookie cutters for the tradition shapes. Then we used a straw to poke a whole so  we’ll be able to hang them later. At first, we decided to air dry these. Most recipes claim it takes just 24 hours and they are wrong. After 2 days, these suckers were still soft. I put them in the oven at 200 degrees for a couple hours and they came out perfect. Our plan is to paint them but like I said, we’ve been busy I still have some time before Christmas, I’m not too worried.
 Dough recipe is:
 2 cups flour
 1 cup salt
 1 cup water
 Mix until dough forms and then roll out and use cookie cutters to shape.
 My favorite is my baby’s footprint. I always wanted to do those with the older kids but I never got around to it. I love how it turned out.
 
 I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Kids Snowflake Ornament

Hello Dearies!
 Hope your December is going well. We have been so busy. I’m looking forward to the holidays but I’m also looking forward to January when all the Holidays stop and things slow down a bit. This mama needs a break
 Anyways, onto todays project. I did these with my kiddos at a school party so I don’t have any before or during shots but the instructions are pretty easy. Still feel free to ask any questions if I confuse you.
 What you will need.
 * Cue tips
 * White construction paper (or whatever color you would like)
 * Glitter (we used silver and red)
 *A photo of your child (or dog, cat, fish, or whomever you like)
 * Glue (plain old Elmers will do just fine)
 * A small amount of string or yarn
 * Scissors
 Step 1: Take your cue tips and glue them onto your construction paper in a circular pattern. This will make your snowflake. You can stagger them so some appear longer or shorter than the others. My daughter (silver one) made them different lengths. My son (red one) did them almost all about the same.
 Step 2: Put extra glue on top of the cue tips and cover with your glitter.
 Step 3: Cut out your photo. (get creative and do different shapes, it doesn’t have to be squares like we did) Then glue photo to the center of your snowflake.
 Step 4: Let dry. Depending on how much glue you use, this may take awhile.
 Step 5: Cut out your snowflake. You can see from the photos that my kiddos took two very different approaches to this step
 Step 6: Tie a string onto one of the cue tips on your snowflake and you are ready to hang!

 I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie