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Salt Dough Ornaments

Last weekend, as part of our weekend festivities, we made salt dough ornaments with the kids. I’m sure I made them a few times as a kid, but I saw this pin on Pinterest and of course grabbed it for future reference. The pin image looked so much better than the painted messes of youth and it seemed so simple: make dough, stamp, bake. But when I delved further and actually looked at the pin link, it turns out it wasn’t salt dough at all but some sort of ceramic material. That is one of the bad things about Pinterest … you only have the word of the original pinner on what it is until you follow the link and read. But that’s one thing that’s great about Pinterest too, ideas build off one another. And so I decided to try it anyway with the salt dough.

Salt dough is super simple to make: 1 part salt, 2 parts flour, 1 part luke warm water (our parts were cups and that yielded dough for plenty of ornaments). Mix it up, knead it into dough. Ours seemed a bit sticky, so we added a bit more flour and got it to be the right consistency. This is much like bread dough … should stick a little, but not too much.

We rolled it, cut it and used stamps to decorate. The key with the stamps is to not press too hard because of course if you do you end up with a black square instead of a pretty stamp. A nice benefit of this is that you get a shallow indentation as well as ink mark. The effect is very nice. Then we used a skewer to make holes (Tabby also used the skewer to make little dots in hers) and baked at 200 FOREVER. Seriously, they’re still in my oven.

They turned out really cute and pretty similar to the original Pinterest photo. I’d love to experiment with some textures and I’d also like to have parchment on hand next time … the wax paper was eaten up by the salt in the dough and we couldn’t bake on it, so getting them off the cookie sheet was a might tricky, although they’re pretty strong.

Last word of advice … keep them away from your dog. Tabby found out the hard way that Loki likes the taste of salt ornaments, followed by a long visit to the toilet for some water.

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2011 in Review: Books

2011 isn’t quite done yet, but I know that my reading time will probably be somewhat diminished over the next 25 days. This year, I set a goal for myself to read 60 books (it was 52 last year, though I actually finished 62) and when I finish my current book, that goal will be met! This of course does not include random little reads I’ve picked up like camping books and crafting books and cookbooks and it also doesn’t include anything I re-read including about 5 of Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s books. I am incredibly grateful that our local libraries have kept their excellent levels of content, particularly audio, even in face of massive budget cuts.

I went through my list (I’m on GoodReads and Shelfari if you’re interested) and was pretty surprised to notice that out of the 60+ books I read this year just a handful were non-fiction. I really enjoy non-fiction – good non-fiction that is but I think it’s hard for me to find. So much of the “non-fiction” out there is so politically slanted one way or the other, it’s hard for me to get into it. I don’t really do politics, don’t’ really like politics and that kills off many possible reads in the non-fiction sector for me. I am also in some ways reluctant to read non-fiction because of the things that have happened with some non-fiction authors like Greg Mortenson. I really enjoyed his books and I as bummed and felt swindled when I learned that his non-fiction was really mostly fiction anyhow. But I’m determined to try and find some more good non-fiction and read it in 2012.

But enough about next year. Here are my superlatives for 2011: Continue reading “2011 in Review: Books”

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Ben on Skis

This weekend we endangered all the guests on Vail Mountain’s Bunny slope by taking Ben up for his first go. Just kidding … our little danger “baby” did very well and had loads of fun. He has been trying to get on skis since last year, hopping on Tabby’s whether she was currently using them or not and trying on his gear every chance he got. Undoubtedly, his beloved sister’s love for the sport influenced him somewhat, but he is naturally into anything physical, he probably would have been gunning to get up there in any case.

We did the typical things you do with a first timer his age … basically catch and release. We ride up the magic carpet with him and take turns catching and releasing. He had a huge smile on his face practically the entire time or at least until he got cold and tired. He was his typically fearless self and even a few minor spills didn’t flag his enthusiasm. But his balance was something to behold and he could right himself quite well 90% of the time he started to fall. He asked to go back later in the evening on his first day and again when we asked him the next morning, so Matt took him back for another go. He didn’t make it long, but he had fun.

Tabby had new skis to try out and whether it was because of rusty legs or the new skis and boots, she had a few more spills the first couple of trips down the hill than the last time she was up. But in no time she figured it out and she was doing really well, moving beyond the “pizza” or snowplow technique and well into a nice parallel technique, beginning to turn and stop in parallel. She was super excited for us to get her up on the big mountain and neither of us can wait to have a chance to do so, but this go-around it was about our friends and their boys and Ben having a first go. Beyond that, the snow was pretty cruddy and we didn’t want to use our own skis so we would’ve had to rend which is a pain. But we have every confidence that she will be tearing it up when we’re back in Jan.

The rest of the weekend was lovely. For years we have done a “cookie weekend” with our friends and then as kids came, the kids as well, and my parents and sister. This year we backed off the cookies (we only made one type) and mostly just played around, watched movies and relaxing. Matt’s travel schedule meant we had to cut out one evening, but it was still nice and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

As always, it’s a bit hard to come back to reality. Oh well.