Salt Dough Creations

On Tuesday the children and I made salt dough cut outs.  What fun that was!  I made the dough and cut it into equal pieces for the children, rolled them out and tossed all our play dough cutters into the middle of the table and let them go to town.  Once they had cut out what they wanted to, and lets say I rolled that dough out at least 50 times, between all the children, we placed our pieces on cookie sheets and baked them.  Half my children left just after lunch (with no school the girls dance was moved to the middle of the afternoon, instead of after school like usual) so I decided that we would wait until today to paint our master pieces.

Now today was the special day to paint these little trinkets.  Out comes the large garbage bags to cover my table, the 14 jars of paint and all the paint brushes I could find around the house.  To town the kids went with painting.  What kid doesn't like to paint????  Once we were done painting our cut outs on to what else.... FINGER PAINTING of course.  What a blast, what a mess!  But the joy they had doing all of it and the joy I had cleaning off 6 kids and all the paint brushes. 

Here's the recipe I used for our salt dough:
Ingredients: (I tripled the recipe and found it was more then enough for 6 kids)

• 1 cup of fine salt
• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of water (may add more)

Instructions:

• In a large bowl, combine the salt and the flour
• Make a well in the salt/flour mixture and add the water
• Knead until smooth and shape into a ball
• When not in use, wrap in plastic or store in an airtight container 
• Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes or until hard

HINT: To get a softer dough you can add more flour. Adding more salt will lend a more granulous affect. To add color to your dough, use different types of flour or add food coloring or paint.
Knead to get an even color.

Additional pictures are displayed on: Ducky's Photos

Baking up a storm!

Wow, its been a while since I have blogged last.  Things have been crazy here, with Christmas activities in full gear along with a lot of life challenges putting some hick-ups in there too.

Well today I decided that I needed to get some Christmas baking done.  I am running outta time.......  With only having one extra little one with me today, I thought it might be a good day to do some.  We started out with the good old sugar cookies.  We will be using these next week for our Christmas party.  Then on to the many, many other new and creative goodies I have decided to make this year.  I have been trying to make healthier food choice for my family and the kids in my care.  So with that, I did some (OK alot) of research on healthy Christmas baking, along with the research I also did a number of tweaks to many of my recipes.  These tweaks come from a good friend of mine that has showed me that you can make a everyday recipe a little healthier by exchanging some ingredients for others.  With all this the kids and I ended up making 8 different baking goodies through out the day.  We were tired, a mess, but had such a blast doing it.  With my little man crawling on the floor eating as much of the batter droppings as he could get, to my daughter feeding the other boy icing while I am taking cookies out of the oven and have my back turned to them.  Hehehe, they don't think I know!!! MOMMY has eyes in the back of her head, she can see and hear everything!  (I remember my mom saying this to me and number of times when I was young).  So in the end it is so much fun cooking and baking with little ones, and ya its a mess but hey, they get to learn new things and well make that mess.  What are kinds for!?!?!?  A decoration? Nope, surely not (at least not mine, they can't sit still for more then 2 minutes at a time).  After 10 hours of baking for me, I thought that is it, no more!  Well then I look at my kitchen, ummmm ya there is more! Not baking now but doing the dishes, putting away all the baking ingredients, and sweeping the floor.  It was much needed that's for sure, I think what the little one didn't get the dog did, but after a while, they both were a little to full to eat much more, so that leaves me with the job of sweeping up too, I don't like sweeping!!  So all is made now just to let them set over night and cut them all up and package them tomorrow.  Yummy, that means taste testing!