DIY Ornaments

Once December 1^st hits, then it’s time to put up the Christmas tree. Mine went up this weekend. Usually it’s a work in progress as the first step is putting up the tree and then the next few days and weeks, we add ornaments to it.

We thought that it might be a fun idea to make some ornaments this week. In the past we have painted ceramic and wooden shapes, but this year we thought we’d use the plastic ornaments that you can find at the craft store which open up. We’re going to open them up and fill them to decorate as well as paint them.

Again, this one is a really inexpensive craft to make with items that you can easily get at the dollar store or probably even find at home.

Painting the ornaments takes more time so you’ll want to do this further in advance if you want to give them away or hang them up. We’ve picked a variety of colours for paint to use; some are Christmasy and some are not. We also have a bunch of different sizes of brushes and some sponges as well. You can pre-sketch out some designs or you can free style it and come up with your design as you go. Do whatever you like. Here’s what we came up with...

This is a drip paint ornament. What we've done is pick a couple of matching colours and dripped them into the ornaments and moved the paint around by turning the ornaments. We did this process a few times to get all of the area covered. Then we let them hang upside down overnight to drain out the excess paint and this is what we got...

Another option to is to fill the ornaments with curled ribbons, shredded snow, larger glitter bits, small punched shapes, or coloured paper or paper from old books so that you can see the words.

For both, you can put ribbons/bows on the outside to adorn the finished ornaments.  

Now you can hang them up in your tree or around your house or you can make a bunch and hand them out as gift this year.  

Christmas Tradition #8 - Gingerbread Cookies

It’s the last post before Christmas. Hard to believe it’s Christmas already this Monday. I am doing my usual holiday baking, making lots of cookies and cakes.

One tradition that we haven’t talked about yet is gingerbread. Whenever you think about gingerbread, you think about Christmastime. I used to make and decorate houses when I was little and always get a decorated gingerbread man with Smartie buttons and icing. I have to admit that I would usually bite off the icing bits and Smartie buttons and leave the rest for my mom, but they are a yummy treat for this time of year.

Last Christmas I made my very first batch of gingerbread men on my own. I found a really easy recipe that you can make ahead of time and freeze the dough for whenever you are ready to make some.

Take a look at the recipe below. You can bake them right away or like I said, you can make the dough and then bake them when you are ready which is what I did this time around.

Gingerbread Cookies

 3 cups of flour

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1 tbsp. ground ginger

½ tsp. salt

12 tbsp. butter, softened

¾ cup molasses

2 tbsp. milk

Mix the dry ingredients together in the mixer bowl and then put it on “stir” to mix them all up.

  

Add the butter until it’s like sand.

With the mixer going, add the molasses and the milk. When the dough comes together, then it’s ready.

Pat into two separate balls and wrap in plastic wrap. You can let them sit in the fridge for about an hour or so and then roll them out and cut shapes or you can label then and place them in the freezer until you are ready to use them. If you plan to use them in the next day or so then you can leave them wrapped tightly in the fridge. 

If you are making them right away and have all your shapes cut out, then you can place them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake for 8-11 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Let the cookies cool on wire racks.

You can decorate your cookies once they have cooled with candies and chocolate treats. Take a look at this post that we did for sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day and try using this same icing on your gingerbread cookies. http://paperwhitecreations.blogspot.ca/2014/02/valentine-baking.html

 

Enjoy your cookies and Merry Christmas!