Hands down the best homemade Christmas decorations...

I saw these on Facebook back in November, but it's taken until now to actually give them a go.  I liked the idea of doing one of each of the kids hands, and then doing each each year as they grow.  As it is, I've got four different size Santa hands for this years tree.

I didn't follow the salt dough recipe that was on Facebook, I've had mixed success with salt dough in the past, so went for the following recipe:

1/2 cup of salt

1/2 cup of flour

1 tsp of oil

and enough boiling water to make a dough.

I mixed the dry ingredients and the oil and then added the water gradually to make a dough, as it was hot, it was a little harder to kneed, but that didn't matter too much.

That was more than enough for four hand prints, and enough for the kids to make some of their own things with.  Usually I would let them do it all, but I was being a bit precious about these, and wanted them to come out just right.

The most important things to remember when doing salt dough, is to make sure that it's properly dry, I left mine in a 100 C oven for over three hours, checking regularly.  Don't make them too fat, and if you do, make sure that they really are fully dry all the way through.  They also need varnishing, to stop moisture getting in.  The decorations we made a few Christmasses ago, only made it one year before mould started to find it's way in and they started to go soft.

So, here we are, my family of four hand print Santas, one from each of the kids.  I've noted the name and date on the back, so hopefully these will last for years to come and I can look back at how tiny their hands were.

Next year I might even try a few footprint trees and Rudolfs.