Salt Dough Fun!

I love Christmas!  I love the smell of cinnamon baking in the oven.  The cinnamon in our house was from salt dough ornaments, not cookies.  We baked about 20 batches of every shape imaginable.  They smelled delicious, but tasted "disgusting" according to my husband.  They looked so realistic he had to have a bite :)

This past year, my mom found a kissing hand cookie cutter.  It is the shape of hand with a heart cut out in the middle.  It is adorable. 

 

Every morning when my son gets on the school bus we hold up our hands and do the "I love you" sign.  He waves through the window and tells my daughter and I, "I love you" through the window.  It gets me every time...

So, when we cut out the kissing hand it made perfect sense to make the hand say "I love you!"  Everyone got to paint their ornament with their own sense of style and we had "priceless" presents.  Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas???

I thought these would be adorable for preschool or kindergarten.  What a beautiful memento for parents to hold onto.  Now making that many salt dough ornaments is kind of a pain, so I tried to think of an alternative that is not as messy or time consuming.

 

I traced my daughter's hand on a piece of foam.  You could have the kids decorate the foam to put their own style on it.  Cut out the handprint and use a little bit of sticky tape to tack down the two middle fingers.  I put a magnet on the back and it is a cute little present.  You can dress it up as much or as little as you want.  It is a quick and easy way to say, "I love you!"

The recipe I used for the salt dough was:
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water
I kept pouring in ground cinnamon until it was the color that I wanted.

Directions:
Mix the salt and water in a bowl.
Slowly add the water, continually stirring.
Knead the dough until it is smooth and no longer sticky.  This took me between 10-15 minutes.
Roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to make your ornaments.
Place dough on cookie sheet and use a tooth pick to widen a hole big enough for a string.
Bake 325 degrees for 1-2 hours.  It depends on how think you make your ornaments.
After the ornaments cool, paint and decorate your ornaments.
Varnish the ornaments after they are completely decorated.
String them up and put them on your tree!