Yesterday I was lucky enough to have my Niece, Brittany here with me for the day again!

After a quick rush in to town to get my nails done (they look very Christmassy!), we came home and started making salt dough ornaments!  They're so easy and so much fun...

The basic recipe is Half a cup of Salt, Half a cup of Water, and One cup of Plain Flour.

Mix the Flour and Salt together in a bowl, and slowly add in the Water, mixing with your hands to form a dough.  Add extra Water in small amounts if your dough is too dry, or extra Flour if it is too wet, then...

You have to knead the dough for about 10 minutes, until it's nice and soft!

After your dough is nice and smooth, you can put a little Vegetable Oil on your hands to stop the dough from drying out.

Then roll it out flat...

And cut out any shape you like!!!

Don't forget to poke holes so you can hang your ornaments on the tree!

I had seen on a TV show where they used the microwave to dry them out quicker.  We tried this with little success, so put the rest in a low oven for about half an hour, turning twice.

Once they're mostly dried out, paint and decorate them any way you want!  We used Watercolor paints, Glitter, Glitter Glue and Nailpolish on ours.

Drying off.  Half Bamboo Skewers made it really easy to hold onto the ornaments while decorating

Thanks to Kirstie's Homemade Christmas for the Salt Dough idea!

Yesterday we had our Niece Brittany (ten) and our eldest Nephew, Braedyn (seven) for the day!

What to do with two bored kids on a rainy day in December?  Why, make Christmas cards of course!

Craft in Progress with Abby supervising in the background, and the cat on the table!

It was really lovely to see them let their creativity flow and create these beautiful cards for friends and family.


We decorated the envelopes too!

Inside of Braedyn's card

You can make cards with pretty much anything - they only thing that is a must is Imagination!!

More craft on the cards today... after I get my nails done of course!

Harry and I had a wonderful day today, spent with our friends Tanya, Alexander and Nicholas over at Zannick : Our Home Ed Journey creating Christmas Crafts!!

Next weekend is our last day at our Dog Training Club for the year, and they're having a break up BBQ, complete with Fancy Dress!  Alexander's dog Bobby and my big boy Harry will be going together as Santa and his trusty Reindeer, so the majority of today was spent creating their costumes.  The boys also worked on some beautiful felt Christmas Stockings for their pets: Zander for his Ratties, and Nick for his new ferret Hagrid (when he arrives!).
Great Photos of the day over at their blog.  Craft (and everything else for that matter) seems to take that much longer when five dogs are trying to 'help'!

Yoda, she is!  Molly, her name!  Helping, she was!

On arriving home, a suprise was waiting for me in the mailbox - the Santa Paws DVD I won from Just Us Kids blog competition.  A big thankyou to Norlin!


An even bigger surprise was waiting for Broc when he took the dogs outside a few minutes ago...  A great big stick insect - for your viewing pleasure.

Well, a busy weekend awaits.  Here's hoping I can find some more time to work on those frugal Christmas tips!