Homemade Salt Dough Ornaments

I take care of a gaggle of kids every afternoon and I'm always looking for cheap fun things to do to keep them busy.  Salt Dough Ornaments were a great idea because it was a multi-day craft and they looked forward to all of the steps.

The first day we made the dough and shaped them using cookie cutters.  We let every child do one and then when we had some leftover dough I let a few do some extras for the kids who weren't there that day.  Make sure to use a straw to poke the hole through BEFORE you bake.  And make it larger than a normal poke.  Spread it around a little because the dough shrinks up a bit when baked.  The hint to these ornaments is bake them LONG and LOW.  A lot of recipes say for about 20 minutes at 300 degrees.  I recommend going around an hour at 250 degrees.  If you go too hot they start to crack a little.

The next time we were together we painted them and we let them do whatever they wanted.  Some just threw the paint on (like Bug), some made elaborate designs (see Goose's cat paw and gingerbread man), and quite a few even threw some glitter on them.

We let them paint for a few days so everyone who comes at different times had a chance.  Then we used Mod Podge to seal them and added some cute ribbon.

I think we've made some of these every year and the girls always love them!

Christmas Decorations

I'm more of a handmade kind of decorator.  I don't like a lot of junk and I just don't see the point in keeping something unless it has nostalgia attached to it.  That's why a lot of our Christmas decorations are things that I remember my mom using when I was younger or stuff the girls have made me over the years.

Every year we put these signs up on our kitchen cabinets.  I love seeing their happy baby art and I'm going to be really sad when they get too worn out to use.  I've already had to stop putting out some stained glass Christmas tree ones and I missed them this year.

Not even our fridge is safe from Christmas decorations.  I have been collecting holiday magnets for years and seeing them all out every year is one of my favorite things!

Our Christmas tree in the girls playroom.

I saw someone on Instagram use a black Christmas tree as a Halloween tree and I loved the idea so I made sure to buy one at the beginning of the holiday shopping season.  So we now have two Christmas trees.  In the beginning I didn't want two trees but by the end of the first night we were all in love with the new tree.  It made our living room so homey and perfect.  It was decorated with all the cast-off ornaments we couldn't fit on our old tree so it's a little bare here.

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Homemade Christmas Ornaments

We love making homemade ornaments for our tree every year.  There are usually several made at school or in their free time but we try to always make one together for our tree and grandparent presents.

Over the years we've made several new ones and several repeats.  Here's some of my favorites:

Of course you have the gingerbread and salt dough ornaments.  They're probably the big classic homemade ornaments that everyone makes at least once.  We do them all the time and love them.

 Another variaton is the cinnamon ornaments.  This one was one I made when I was in grade school and my mom has kept all these years.

My favorites so far is probably these cute buckets of snowballs.  I bought tiny buckets from Hobby Lobby and all we did was glue some cotton balls in and decorate them.  Super easy but so cute.

The first ones we made together were these popsicle stick snowflakes.  I glued them into snowflake shapes and gave the girls piles of buttons and glitter and let them go crazy.

We tried these yarn ones a couple of years ago and even though we had a difficult time trying to figure out how to do them I still think they turned out sweet.

 This year Bug did a melted snowman with hot glue and buttons.  We started a bottlecap snowman but it never was finished in time for Christmas :(

The Adventures of Ack and Snowy

Bug was very upset last year because her Elf, Ack, forgot to move most nights.  So the very first thing she asked for when Christmas season started was for her Elf to be better.  Mommy sent him to Elf Retraining School and got him a new best bud to encourage him to be better and Bug was very satisfied with his results.

 His very first night here was a night Bug spent in and out of the hospital for appointments and procedures so he stayed at home with Goose but sent Snowy in his place with a letter and a present for her.

Most nights he just left to go see Santa and came back to a different location but occasionally he brought the girls presents or played silly tricks on them.

One night he took a marker and colored on pictures of family members.

He took off his clothes and made snow angels!

We got a new Christmas tree for our living room and he brought them each new ornaments to decorate it.

Silly Ack took a bath in marshmallows.

I made pancake mix the night before and he got up and made himself teeny tiny Ack-sized pancakes before the girls got up.

There was a very intense game of Tic Tac Toe which we unfortunately never found out who won.

They brought the girls some new mugs and packages of hot cocoa!

Bug looked so forward to finding her visitors every day and is already talking about where they will be next year.

Yarn Ornaments

I know this is too old to be of use but we got a late start this year since I was so sick throughout most of December.  As soon as I got off work I would nap until the girls came home and then it was homework/food/showers/storytime/dishes/laundry all the way to bedtime at around nine.
So these were finished with just one day to spare but I think they did a great and creative job on them!

I see these a lot with cardboard but since I didn't have any that was thin enough I used cardstock.   I traced two circles on each one using the bottom of a plastic Happy Meal bucket.  We made six so each girl had three to decorate.

The girls painted whatever they wanted on one side.  Bug's are the brightly colored three and Goose chose blue and gray shades to match her white yarn.  Her gradiated one is so pretty and it took her ages to mix all those individual colors!

I laminated them to make them sturdier then cut small slits evenly around them.  Bug didn't want to do a lot of confusing work so she told me to stop after eight.  Goose decided to brave more than that but I think by the end she wished she had stuck with eight, too.
We wrapped the string all the way across then started to move to the right with each turn.  I let them have complete control so they're not perfect stars like most of the Pinterest example ones were, but I love them all the same.