Baby Autograph Guest Book Keepsake Album

So, it's been quite around here for the past few days.  I appologize for the lack of posts.  First we had a round of sick kids, then a few days of no school for parent teacher conferences.

In the mean time, I've been working on a few custom orders.  Like this baby autograph guest book keepsake album for a special mother-to-be in Australia.

This is an 8" x 8" Hardbound baby autograph guest book in blue polka dot and brown.

Behind the signature pages are brown card stock for photos.  Like most of my paper covered albums, I included a matching pen and personized the first page. I really like how this book came out.  The size is just perfect and the polka dots give it that cuteness for a baby.  I have some other colored polka dot papers that I think I know what to do with now, don't you?

Salt Dough Ornaments

Today, I marked one major task off my holiday to-do list inside my holiday planner.

I'm happy to say it's beginning to feel like Christmas around our home.

The kids were excited and put oodles and oodles of handmade and commercial ornaments on our tree. Each one special in some sort of way, each child happy to find a place to hang something, and our tree actually starting to lean from the weight of their efforts.

For a moment we all stood and held our breath to see whether the tree topper, an angel, would stay atop without falling over on the tilted side of the tree.

All those salt dough ornaments we made pull a lot of weight when they're all placed on one side of tree.

One of the things I love most about salt dough ornaments, is that they are kid friendly for several reasons.

Salt dough ornaments are easy to make, you can paint and decorate them any way you want, and if they break - there's no sharp glass for young children or pets to get hurt.

Here's the recipe we use each year to bake up our holiday salt dough ornaments:


Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water

Directions:
1. Mix salt and flour.
2. Add in half the water, then gradually add the remaining water.
3. Knead until the dough is smooth, this can take up to 10 minutes.

Create Ornaments:
Simple holiday cookie cutters will do, or sculpt with your hands. If the dough gets too sticky use flour. Kids love making ornaments from salt dough, it's just like making stuff out of play dough or clay.

After your ornament creations are finished, lay them on a baking sheet. Take a straw and poke holes at the top before baking.

Turn your oven on you lowest setting or about 200 degrees. You'll want to let them bake for around 2 hours, depending on the thickness.

(Just don't let any new comers in the house bite into a sample thinking they're sugar cookies, they might think your a bad cook. lol..)

Once they cool, you can let your child paint them, glitter them, or decorate them further.

Cut ribbon and tie through the hole to hang. Or you can go to your local fabric shop and get remnant fabric, snip 1/2" down the fabric and tear in strips to use instead of ribbon.

I'm sure no matter how they turned out, they'll be beautiful on your tree this year, and the smiles on your children's faces will be well worth the effort to make your own salt down ornaments this year.