Christmas and crafts might go together,  Christmas and Susan might go together, but crafts and Susan?  Not so much!  My poor sister has been the recepient of gifts from many of my craft phases, none of which have been pretty.  I feel particulaly bad about the “story of life” flower pot. I would say you would have to see it to believe it, but even then disbelief might be the only thing you feel.

It was time to try again. After all, 52NEW is about learning new things and about learning things that I could put to good use. Steve and I might not have kids, but many of our friends do and I figured it might be a handy skill for Aunty Susie to have.

Seriously a 4 year old could of done a better job than me.

What was interesting was that I had NO memory of ever doing this before, my sister mentioned that we had as kids, but I didn’t recall it at all, until I started painting. It didn’t all come back, it was just that faint sensation that this was an activity that once a long time ago I had done.

My hunch is I stank at it as much as a kid as I do now and purged it from my memory banks!

Salt dough is pretty straight forward, so the actual making of the dough and cutting out of the shapes is pretty easy, but I did learn that “freehand” is for the artistic types, if you are like me, stick with the cookie cutters!

As for decorating, the best advice I had was more detail the better! Don’t be afraid to make dents with a fork or use other things to get creative!

DO NOT use food colouring, use paint. Food colouring just doesn’t saturate enough and when you try to make that happen things just get very very very messy. VERY messy.. did I mention MESSY?? It will stain everything but the stinkin’ cookie!!

This 52NEW  reaffirmed for me that I love the idea of doing crafts but I am NO Martha Stewart!

The good news is that I realized that you don’t really have to be, and those ornaments will hang on our tree with great pride and will forever represent the Christmas of 2010!  You can find a great recipe and set of instructions ON THIS WEBPAGE. Have fun!!

I did end up with one ornament that was a gift.. My partner at work was immortalized as Dan “the snowman” Freeman. A slightly freaky snowman, but it does bear a slight resemblance, kinda…

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred,

and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit,

become a child again at Christmas-time.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder