Ooooooh, I just love this season! Our whole tree is filled with homemade ornaments and this year we are making salt dough ornaments. It is so easy and satifying to make this dough (especially if you have a stand mixer). I googled it and found this recipe here.

Recipe:
1 cup salt (make sure it is finely ground…like plain table salt).
2 cup of all-purpose flour
1 cup lukewarm water

Follow the recipe at the link above, but I would add that you may need to increase the amount of flour. (I kept having to add flour because it was too sticky. On the other hand, if the dough is too dry it will crack.) The real key is kneading the dough. Kneading makes it smooth and a tiny bit more elastic. I threw all the ingredients into the stand mixer (with a dough hook attachment) and let it mix for ten minutes, scraping the bowl and adding flour as needed. Once the dough is ready, tape some parchment to your work surface to make clean-up easy and to keep the dough from sticking. Make sure to put in the hanging holes while they are wet. Also, know that the ornaments will shrink and maybe warp a bit.

After they are baked and dry, paint with acrylic paint and use a water-based polyurethane to seal them.

The kids LOVED it. Use any textures or kitchen tools to help make designs and shapes. We even made probably the world’s first salt dough ornament of Finn the Human from Adventure Time!

Using letter stamps.

Using LEGO as stamps to press in texture of minifig and circles.