Holidays

Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament

December 4, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Christmas always makes me nostalgic.

I pull out all the ornaments we’ve collected over the years and I hang up the stockings my Mom lovingly cross stitched for everyone in our family.

I set up my Grandmother’s nativity scene.

We read some of the Christmas books I had as a child.

And, I always want to try and recreate some of the Christmas crafts I remembered doing as a child, like this Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament.

Give your Christmas tree an old-fashioned flair with a Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament. It's such a fun keepsake ornament your kids will love to make.

Did you ever make these Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornaments as a child?

I know I did, or at least I think I did. It’s one of those crafts that have become so ingrained in my head that I feel like I’ve known about it forever.

Since it’s just not Christmas without a salt dough project (or at least to me it’s not), I added this craft to our activity advent calendar. Now we’ve got a whole batch of these fun candy canes hanging on our tree.

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Have you ever made salt dough before? I just love working with it. It’s easy to make and easy to work with.

Salt Dough Recipe

1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup warm water

Mix the salt and the flour together. Next add 1/2 cup of warm water. Mix until combined and a dough forms. The consistency should be similar to play dough.

For the candy canes, divide the dough into two equal parts. Add red food coloring (or red liquid watercolor) to one half of the dough and knead it in until it is as red as you want it to be. I used liquid water colors for ours. Keep the other half natural.

We were able to make 10 salt dough candy canes with one batch of dough.

How to make a Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament

To make our candy canes, we took a small chunk of white and a small chunk of red dough. The girls rolled each one out until they made equal-sized snakes.

A word of caution: we discovered that if we made our snakes too skinny, they broke when we tried to twist them together.

After they had rolled out their dough, they twisted the two colors together.

We pressed the ends together just a bit so they would stay together. Then, we took the twist and curled one side into a hook.

We had our candy canes!

As you can see, we had all shapes and sized of candy canes. Some average size, some short, and one really big one.

I added them all to a parchment-lined baking sheet and put them in a 250 degree F oven.

It’s hard to predict exactly how long they need to be in the oven, so check them after one hour. Continue to check until your candy canes are hard. Ours took about 2 hours. The thickness of the candy canes, the amount you make, and your type of oven all factor into the amount of time it takes to harden. I always recommend to check them on a regular basis.

Once our candy canes had cooled off, I tied some twine around them so the girls could hang them on the tree.

It was an afternoon filled with Christmas nostalgia.

Even though I was mostly an observer, I’ve still got those candy canes hanging on my tree to remind me of all the fun I had with the girls while making the Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament of my childhood.

The Best Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

November 30, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Some of my favorite and most long-lasting kid-made ornaments on our tree are made from salt dough.

Salt dough is such a fun medium to use. It’s easy to make, simple for little hands to work with, and the creative possibilities are endless.

Every year I find great ideas for salt dough ornaments for kids. And, we’ve made several of our own to decorate our Christmas tree.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

I’ve rounded up some of my favorite salt dough ornament ideas. Some of these are ideas we’ve made ourselves and others and ideas I’d love to try.

I just know you’ll find some great ideas you’ll want to do with your kids!

Handprint, Footprint, and Fingerprint Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

Use handprints to make a fun group of snowmen with this beautiful Snowman Keepsake Ornament from Learning and Exploring Through Play. This would also be a perfect ornament to give as a gift.

These Salt Dough Fingerprint Baubles from The Best Ideas for Kids are super simple and super fun to make. Don’t you want some on your tree?

Use your fingerprints to make the lights on the tree with this fun Christmas Tree Ornament idea from Mommy’s Bundle.

Or, you can use your fingerprints to make buttons for these cute Gingerbread Man Ornaments from The Imagination Tree.

Your handprint is the perfect canvas for this Handprint Santa Ornament from From ABCs to ACTs.

Show off your little one’s adorable footprints with this Mistletoe Footprint Keepsake Ornament from Fun Handprint Art.

Use an imprint of your finger to make a cute nutcracker. Check out Rainy Day Mum to make a Keepsake Nutcracker Ornament.

Fingerprints turn into an adorable snowman enjoying the snow with this Snowman Ornament from Crafty Morning.

Turn your footprint into an adorable reindeer ornament with this adorable Footprint Reindeer Ornament from Fun Handprint Art.

More Fun Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

Add a little old-fashioned flair to your tree when you make a batch of our Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornaments.

Make a batch of colored salt dough and use it to make our pretty Salt Dough & Pony Beads Ornaments.

Does your kid love emojis? If so, they’ve love to make this fun and silly Salt Dough Emoji Ornaments from Kitchen Counter Chronicles.

Get out cookie cutters for these Glittery Salt Dough Ornaments from The Best Ideas for Kids.

Use Christmas-scented salt dough to make a lovely Christmas Star Garland from Rainy Day Mum.

Melt pony beads in the middle of your ornaments to make these beautiful Salt Dough Suncatcher Ornaments from Homegrown Friends.

What’s Christmas without the Grinch? Decorate your tree with these fun Grinch Ornaments from Kitchen Counter Chronicles.

Use sea glass to decorate a Christmas tree with this beautiful Tree Ornament from Red Ted Art.

Decorate your ornaments with melted crayon to make these Melted Crayon Salt Dough Ornaments from The Artful Parent.

Let your imagination guide you to make whatever ornaments you like with Rainy Day Mum’s recipe for The Quickest Ever Salt Dough. It’s a great basic recipe to get you started creating!

No matter what you decide, simple is always a good idea. Mama Smiles shows you how her daughter helped guide the process to make a whole batch of salt dough ornaments. While Crayon Freckles shows you how to involve your child in every step of the process. Let them make the salt dough and then create with it.

Which of these salt dough ornaments for kids are you going to make with your family this year?

Stained Glass Window Ornament

November 20, 2017 By Terri Thompson

The girls love making new ornaments for our Christmas tree.

In fact, if I ask them if they want to do a craft project, they usually tell me they want to make a new Christmas ornament.

One of our recent creations was our Stained Glass Window Ornament. This was so easy to make and are a perfect choice if you’re looking for a mess-free kids’ Christmas craft.

This Stained Glass Window Ornament is fun for toddlers and preschoolers to make. Plus, it makes a colorful addition to your Christmas tree.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Supplies Needed:

Clear Contact Paper
Black construction paper
Colored tissue paper torn into small pieces
Scissors
Hole punch
String

Prep your project

In order to prep this project, I cut the window shapes out of the black construction paper. You’ll need two window cutouts for each ornament. If you double-up the paper and cut two at once, it will make it much easier to match up the two pieces in the end.

I taped down a piece of Contact Paper and placed the window pieces on it.

Each girl was going to make two stained glass window ornaments.

Make your Stained Glass Window Ornament

Now for the fun part!

The girls started applying the tissue paper. Don’t worry about covering up the black construction paper, we’ll take care of that part later.

My toddler, in particular, loved the stickiness of the Contact Paper. Not only was this a fun craft for her, but a great sensory experience as well.

She wouldn’t stop applying tissue paper until the entire piece of Contact Paper was covered.

After we were done with the tissue paper, we took the coordinating window pieces and lined them up with the ones already on the contact paper.

You will now have two window cutouts with tissue paper in between.

Finally, cover the entire project with a second sheet of contact paper.

Cut out each window, punch a hole in the top and add a string for hanging on the tree. Voila, it’s done!

Now, we have a beautiful Stained Glass Window Ornament hanging on our tree.

Do you have any fun and simple ideas for Christmas ornaments? I’m running out of ideas!

*Special note: This post was originally published in 2011. It’s a timeless activity that’s been updated for this year.

Fun Cranberry Activities for Kids

November 10, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Have you thought much about cranberries other than cracking open a can and serving them with cranberry dinner?

I’ll admit, it’s definitely not something I think about often. But, around November I start seeing them and my mouth starts watering with the thought of delicious cranberry recipes.

That’s when I realize just how fascinating this little fruit is.

These cranberry activities for kids are fun to share with your family. You can have fun learning, playing, and cooking with this Thanksgiving favorite.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Learn with Cranberries

Did you know that cranberries are native to North America?

Did you also know that we think they may have been served at the first Thanksgiving? That’s because the cranberry was important to Native Americans and would have been grown in the Northeastern part of the United States during that time period.

There are so many fun things to learn about cranberries and these hands-on cranberry activities are all great ways to learn more about this super fruit.

How are cranberries grown? Learn about how they’re grown and harvested with this short 5-minute video. It’s completely kid-safe!

Did you know that cranberries float? Your little one will love experiencing this for themselves with this fun Cranberry Sensory Play Idea for Toddlers at Views From a Step Stool.

Explore, learn, and get some fine motor practice with this Cranberries in Water Sensory Science Play idea from Little Bins for Little Hands.

Learn a little science with cranberries with these experiments from Teaching to Inspire. You can also download mini books to go with your experiments.

For even more cranberry science, check out Stir the Wonder. So fascinating! You could spend all day doing cranberry science projects.

Use cranberries in a STEM project. Little Bins for Little Hands has a fun Thanksgiving twist to a classic engineering project.

Make cranberries dance with this simple science project from The STEM Laboratory.

Play with Cranberries

Cranberries make a fun sensory experience. Check out these awesome cranberry sensory play ideas.

We had loads of fun playing with this 2-Ingredient Cranberry Dough from Learn Play Imagine when we made it. Plus, if you add just one more ingredient, you can transform the dough into cranberry ooblek. Fun!

You can also make a simple No-Cook Cranberry Play Dough from Natural Beach Living. When you’re done playing, you can use the dough to make some Cranberry Play Dough Christmas Ornaments.

Get creative and paint with some cranberry scented paint. Get the recipe for this homemade fall paint at Housing a Forest.

Make some cranberry slime! Doesn’t that sound like fun? Find the recipe for this taste-safe Cranberry Slime at Schooling a Monkey.

Cook with Cranberries

I don’t know about you, but I love the flavor of cranberries. So when you’re thinking of cranberry activities, you should plan on getting in the kitchen with your kids. Any of these recipes would be fun to make and eat together.

Cranberry and Clementine Mini Loaves at Kitchen Counter Chronicles

Walnut, Cranberry, and White Chocolate Chip Cookies at Rainy Day Mum

Mini Cranberry Orange Upside Down Cakes at Food Lovin’ Family

Cranberry Pecan Brownies at Barefeet in the Kitchen

Cranberry Crescent Rolls at Beauty Through Imperfection

Classic Cranberry Sauce at Stir the Wonder

Cranberry Peanut Butter Energy Balls at Inspired by Family

Which of these cranberry activities for kids do you want to do?

Countdown to Christmas

If you’re anything like me, I know you’re looking for fun family activities to do this Christmas. But, not just anything. I’m not looking for elaborate and I’m definitely not looking for something that would require a million trips to the craft store.

That’s why I just love Countdown to Christmas – 24 Activities, Crafts, and Recipes to Countdown to Christmas by Cerys Parker from Rainy Day Mum. The activities are simple (you won’t find anything elaborate) and definitely fun. They’re perfect for families. And, they’re perfect for the advent season.

This fabulous resource for Christmas family fun can be purchased here. Take a peek, you’ll love it!

Cardboard Tube Pilgrim Hat Craft

November 9, 2017 By Terri Thompson

We’ve made so many turkey crafts over the years. They’re so cute and so much fun.

But, there are other fun things you can do for Thanksgiving, like this cute Cardboard Tube Pilgrim Hat Craft.

So grab a few supplies and let’s get crafting. And, once you’re done, check out all of our Thanksgiving crafts for kids for more fun.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Supplies needed:

Empty toilet paper roll tube
Black craft paint
Black, brown, and yellow construction paper
Glue
Scissors

How to make your Pilgrim Hat craft

First, you’ll want to cut your cardboard tube in half. We’ll only be using 1/2 of the tube for our craft, so you’ll be able to make two pilgrim hats out of one toilet paper tube.

Use your black paint to paint your entire half of the tube.

While your paint is drying, cut a circle from your black construction paper.

Your circle needs to be larger than the cardboard tube because this will be the rim of your hat. I found that tracing one of our drinking glasses was the perfect size for my hat.

Next, cut a strip from your brown paper. It needs to be long enough to go all the way around your cardboard tube. My strip was 6-1/2 inches long and was the perfect length.

Also cut a square from your yellow paper and a smaller square from your brown paper. This will be the buckle.

Glue the smaller brown piece in the middle of your yellow square.

Once your black paint is dry, it’s time to attach your rim to your hat.

Find the middle of your black circle and poke a hole in it. Also, place your cardboard tube in the middle of the circle and trace a light circle around it. Cut from the center of the circle to your traced circle. Fold up your wedges.

Use your wedges to attach your rim to the inside of your cardboard tube with glue.

Press down and let it dry before you move on.

Finally, glue your brown strip around your hat.

Attach the yellow buckle to your brown strip.

Let everything dry and then it’s ready to play with!

This Pilgrim Hat craft is so cute to display. You could make a whole batch and use them as Thanksgiving place cards, just write the names on the hat with white chalk. We also found that these hats were the perfect size for our Beanie Boos collection!

If you enjoyed this pilgrim hat craft, the above photo is perfect for sharing on Facebook. Or, you can save the photo below on Pinterest.

Countdown to Christmas

This fabulous resource for Christmas family fun can be purchased here. Take a peek, you’ll love it!

Holidays