How to: Christmas Presents

With this being Alyssa's first Christmas, I am trying to do all sorts of things. Obviosuly she is a bit young for a lot of stuff at the moment, but I want to create some keepsakes for both her and I. Now, as previously mentioned several times, I love Christmas, especially giving people presents. This year, I wanted to do some personal ones from Alyssa to the people who love her most (which is blimmin everyone as they are all wrapped round her little finger!!) This can get expensive though, so I decided to try and "DIY" some christmas presents and keepsakes. One cheap and easy version of this is salt dough... 3 ingredients and bobs your uncle (and fanny's your aunt as my nan would say) and you have some dough to shape as you will.

How to...

So first of all, we will be needing a mixing bowl and spoon (though hands are perfectly acceptable!!) The general rule with measurements is One, Half, Half when making the salt dough. So in this case, I am using 250g of flour, 125g of salt and 100ml of water (FYI I am not that clever, I did in fact use a mesaurement converter for grams to mls from my old pal Google!)

Place the flour and salt in the bowl and mix them up together. Now, you want to slowly add in the water a bit at a time, whilst mixing it in. You do not want to end up with wet sticky dough, and will quite probably have some water left over like I did. I think it's best to use hands for this because then you can tell when it starts to feel like the right consistency and that also allows you to pull the dough together.

Preparing the dough...

Once you feel it is the right consistency, and have roughly pulled it together, you can make it into a ball and pop it out on the side. Now you shouldn't need any flour on your surface as it is not supposed to be a wet dough, but if you find it is sticking by all means chuck a little down. What you want to do now, is knead the dough, like you would for bread or pizza (oooo yum pizza....cheese, mushrooms....tangent!!) for a few minutes to make it good to work with and i try to always end with mine in a ball ready to use.

Making and Shaping...

Once you have finished kneading the dough you are ready to go. Grab your rolling pin and roll it out to the thickness that you require (remember the thicker the dough the longer to dry!) For my keepsakes, I am rolling the dough quite thick, then I am using regular old cookie cutters to make different shapes in the dough. Once cut, I then transfer them to a baking tray that has been covered with parchement paper. Now, it is Alyssa's turn to help (she always makes me do the grunt work!!) and I press her hand into each of the shapes (making sure she doesn't pop her fist in her mouth in between as that would not go down well) to make a palm print impression on each of the shapes (hence the thickness of the dough). I am going to make mine so they can be hung by a ribbon or string, so I also used a cocktail stick to make a small hole near the top of the dough. Don't forget that you don't have to make flat pieces, if you are particularly artistic (I am creative but in no way artistic...you'd confuse my stickmen for blades of grass!) then why not make a 4D ornament instead!

Baking or Waiting...

Now that they are made and shaped you have two options; bake or wait. It all depends on how much time you have. If you aren't in a rush you can leave them on the tray in a warm dry place and in a few days they will be ready to decorate. If like me you are on a Christmas deadline (or if also like me you maybe slightly impatient) you can pop them in the oven. You need to have the oven preheated, but on the lowest setting as it needs to be a cool oven. Pop the tray in low down in the oven and leave for 3-4 hours (yeah a long time but quicker than a few days). Some people say that you can use the microwave, but I have never had much luck with this as they tend to crack. Remove from the oven and let them cool down for a bit.

Decorating...

Once cooled, you can decorate them to your hearts content. I find that poster paint, quite thick, works well, but you can also use permanent markers or even glue and stick stuff to them (goggly eyes are good on figurines!). Mine are hand prints of Alyssa, so I am going to paint each it's own colour, and then once they have dried, tie a ribbon on them with a name tag for each person that she is giving one to (tune in DEC 26th to see her results... until then NO PEEKING!!)

It is not a big gift, it is not an expensive gift, but it is one that comes straight from the heart and one she will never be able to give again as she will grow and get bigger and her baby hands (which i totally adore, even though they get slobbery and weirdly cheesy) will grow with her. That's one homemade gift we will be giving this Christmas. Don't forget to show us yours!