Salt Dough Holiday Decorations

I've been feeling particularly festive this holiday season. Christmas isn't usually my thing: stressing out in the kitchen preparing a fete of dishes and entertainments is enough to send me crawling under my covers with a bottle of wine. I enjoy cooking but I am still (awkwardly) working on the art of entertaining. Wrapping christmas presents used to be enough for me to consider institutionalizing myself. If the corners weren't straight and my lines weren't perfect I would mope and watch a marathon of depressing holiday movies. Too bad my mother and grandmother set the bar for aesthetics so high. Now that the penguin is on the brink of turning three, though, I have been finding myself participating more in the holiday. Nothing like a toddler to light the fire under my holiday ass.

Today I am making salt dough ornaments, because I am stuck at the house in the middle of a December monsoon with my two and a half kids. Babysitting was actually pleasant for ten entire minutes, which makes this cheap and fun art project altogether worth it.

Salt Dough Handprints

Ingredients:

1 cup table salt

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup warm water

optional three or four drops food coloring

optional acrylic paint

optional ribbon, twine, or raffia

Here's how easy this is: throw the flour and salt in a bowl, and slowly add water with the food coloring mixed in until the flour and salt mixture makes a dough. If the dough is too sticky and sticks to your hands or the counter, add a little more flour. I kneaded the ball of dough on the counter until the color was thoroughly mixed in and the consistency was like gritty play-doh. Separate the dough into three or four balls. Roll them out flat with a rolling pin or cup or whatever it is you have: I used a can of peaches. Use what you've got.

And then the fun part for the kids. They went back to their shenanigans pretty pleased with themselves that they made their handprints by themselves. The teeny-tiny was less than impressed, so I just used her foot instead. Then I took a drinking straw and made a hole in the top of the handprints so they could be hung.

I put the handprints on a cookie sheet with some wax paper underneath and put them in the oven set to 200 degrees. I expect to pull them out in two hours or so. Maybe I'll get fancy and paint some gold stars on them with acrylic. I've heard that you could use finger paint if you aren't feeling quite so daring, but I imagine this would soften the dough at the worst and flake off at best. Use your own judgment.

Here they are in the oven. Fancy, eh? Now to go see what they have destroyed in my 15 minute absence.