Christmas Crafts

I haven't really done too many crafts lately with the kids so since it is Christmas time, I figured it was a good time to do a couple.  The first thing we did was make salt dough ornaments.  It's something I'd done with my students in the past and thought it would be fun to do with my kids.  I also wanted something to remember how sweet and little their hands were.

1 C flour
1/2 C salt
1/2 C water

Mix it together with your hands until the dough forms.  I had to add just a tad more flour to get it to the right consistency.  Then just roll it out and press your hand into the dough.  Once I put the hand on the parchment paper on the cookie sheet, I used a straw to poke a hole at the top so that we can add a string to hang it from later.  Then bake in the oven for a couple hours at 250.  I started checking them after 2 hours to see if they were hard enough.  I think they actually baked for about 2 hours and 15-20 minutes.  We waited until the next day to paint them.  We just painted Santa for all three hands.  They turned out pretty cute!

The next thing we made was a canvas painting. Alex and Abby's hands made the tree and their thumbs made the ornaments.  Then each kiddo made a snowman using their foot.  I really love how this project turned out.

We also made some Christmas cookies.  I used a new recipe and thought the cookies turned out great.  They have cream cheese and almond extract to make them extra tasty.  They frosting turned out well, too.  I've never made frosting like this before, and I liked how it turned out.  You can see the recipe here.  Instead of painting with food coloring, like the recipe suggests, we just decorated with what we had on hand.  The kids were proud of their cookies!