Easy Salt Dough Ornaments!

We wanted to do something a little different with our Christmas tree this year so we decided to make our own ornaments! I put this off for a long time because I thought it would be too difficult or time consuming. I was surprised to find out that these ARE really simple and quick to make! We used gingerbread cookie cutters this time and we decided to use some of the more natural ingredients around the kitchen to color these with. We used turmeric for the yellow, cinnamon for the reddish-brown, cocoa for the dark grey and just plain salt dough for white. The “people” came out all different shapes, colors and sizes so the boys called them “Gingerpeople of the world”. I thought it was a great idea! The boys had so much fun making these that I know we will make them again next year! I am told that these will preserve until next year, but we might decide to donate them instead of keeping them in the RV all year.

Gingerpeople of the world recipe:
4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 cup salt
Various seasonings for color

Instructions: 
Heat oven to 325 degrees.
Mix ingredients together. It will feel really dry, just keep mixing. The dryer the dough the better they dry out while cooking!
At this point you can separate into a few bowls and add the desired color. We used cinnamon, turmeric, and cocoa powder!
Roll out until about 1/8 inch thick.
We rolled the dough right on the cookie sheet so we didn’t have to move them after we cut them out.
Bake at 325 for about 1 hour or until hard. We have a convection oven so we did about an hour and a half.
Let cool completely on a wire rack and then decorate!
Varnish can be used once decorated to seal the ornaments if you want to keep them for next year!