Homemade Christmas Decorations

This weekend I thought it would be nice to add a personal touch to the Christmas tree. P decided she would like to make some ginger bread men to put on the tree after seeing some ornamental ones in the shops. We made ours using salt dough, the recipe is below and all the ingredients can be thrown in together and kneaded until it resembles dough.

P helped to makes the dough and added the ingredients her self, she loved getting messy hands and seeing it coming together. While she did this I popped the oven on 100 c.

The next stage was to roll out the salt dough on to a flat surface, we found it best to flour the work top before you start. The dough needs to be rolled until it is the thickness of a £1 coin or maybe a little thicker.

P cut out the gingerbread men her self with a cutter and needed just a little help because of the floppy arms and legs. These were then placed on a oven tray lined with baking paper. Our needed to be cooked for 2 hours and flipped over half way through.

Once baked they looked like this. I should add that before we cooked them we made a hole for the ribbon, we used a cutter but a straw would do the same trick.

Each ginger bread man was then painted with acrylic paint but you could use poster paint. Then they coated them in 2 layers of PVA glue to protect them in case they got wet and to help them last longer.

When they were completely dry P poked the ribbon through the hole and I knotted them ready for the tree. P decided where she wanted them on the tree and I must say it look so much better now.