Christmas salt dough ornaments

We have been making a lot of our own Christmas decorations lately... mainly because it is something fun to do. I actually went out to the Christmas shops to buy some new decorations but they were all a bit cheap and nasty. In the end I didn't bother, I think we will just stick to making them.

Speaking of making Christmas decorations we have made some fabulous salt dough ornaments. I have found a new recipe for salt dough and I like it. It is based on a recipe I found at Mum in the Madhouse, but I have adapted it a little.

Salt Dough Recipe
2 cups of table salt (I find cooking salt too coarse)
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of oil
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of corn flour
Approximately half to one cup of cold water (during the kneading process)

Instructions: Combine the salt and one cup of water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, let the salty mixture bubble for a few minutes while stirring. I thought this process might dissolve the salt completely but it didn't. After a few minutes take the saucepan off heat and add flours and oil. Stir vigorously. This is when I looked at my mixture dubiously – it was not a dough. I poured the whole lot on to the kitchen bench. When it had cooled the kids helped me with the kneading. I slowly added cold water to the mix until we had a good dough consistency. Once you have turned your dough into shapes or sculptures bake in the oven at low heat (150ºC or 300ºF) for 3 to 4 hours. Keep an eye on it so the dough does not burn.

The mixture after cooking the salt and adding in the flour

Let's knead

Once the dough looked like a dough I divided it in half. I rolled out a portion for each kid and they cut out their Christmas shapes. Cakey poked a hole in each shape with a straw so we can string them up on the Christmas tree. I carefully laid each shape on a lined baking tray and we baked the dough in the oven for 4 hours at a low temperature. If your kids won't wait for hours to get their hands on their salt dough try Rainy Day Mum's quick microwave salt dough.

Making the shapes, I dusted some flour on the bench to stop the dough sticking

Our salt dough shapes after baking in the oven for 4 hours

We didn't get to paint our salt dough until the next day. Every single piece was painted and glitter was added too. I have stored the ornaments away in an air tight container ready for the Christmas tree. These salt dough ornaments are going to look fantastic! (Note: if you have issues with humidity you might want to seal with with a varnish as recommended by Learning 4 kids).

You can find all our Christmas craft ideas here.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to The Kids Co-op, Kids Get Crafty, It's Playtime and Tuesday Tots

Christmas cards with paper snowflakes

I was born and raised in Australia – where it is regularly over 35˚C (95˚F) on Christmas day. Hot Christmases are completely normal for me... and yet, I love the winter wonderland theme at Christmas time. I guess I am not the only one – our shopping centres display fake snow at Christmas even though all the shoppers are wearing thongs and shorts!

With Christmas approaching I was inspired to make paper snowflakes with the kids. I followed the instructions from Bon Temps Beignet. She does a brilliant job of explaining how to get the folds right so I am not going to do that here. My advice is to spend 5-10 minutes of non-kid time to get the first snowflake right. Once you have mastered one, it is easy and you will blow your kids' minds with your snowflake prowess!

This is how our paper snowflake craft session unfolded: 

I fold the paper, I cut the paper, I hand the paper over to the first child to unfold, child unfolds the paper to reveal a stunning paper snowflake, mouths drop open, eyes go wide, second child yells "I want one, I want one".... repeat.

I did have a roll of sticky tape nearby to fix any tears that were inflicted on the paper snowflakes during the 'unfolding'.

Eventually Cakey wanted to make them herself. I had a stack of very thin, green paper which I folded for her. She was able to cut out the patterns herself which meant Boo could monopolise my snowflake output. (Last year we made a simpler and technically inaccurate version of a snowflake).

Cakey's snowflakes

After the snowflake craft was abandoned I was left with a bowl full of paper snowflakes. They were so pretty I tucked away my favourites and waited for inspiration. A few days later, a large roll of thick watercolour paper conked me on the head as it fell from a high shelf... it really did, honest. It gave me an idea – combine the snowflakes with the watercolour paper to make Christmas cards.

Adding layers – snowflakes glued on and then stencilled with stamp pads

That evening I glued the snowflakes onto the watercolour paper and left it to dry. I had watched a video clip of Julie Balzer make a lovely layered stencilled design so I thought we could attempt something similar. Cakey and I sat side by side and we stencilled patterns onto the paper with stamp pads and coloured ink. Cakey also added a few stamps of her own. They were blotchy and imperfect which suited us just fine.

Watercolour wash over the top

I was pretty darn excited with how this was turning out. Once the kids were in bed I borrowed their watercolour paints and added some colour washes over the top.

I spent an afternoon cutting up the large decorative piece of watercolour paper. I turned it into Christmas cards and lots of different sized present tags. Cakey sat beside me and rounded the corners with our new corner cutter. Unfortunately we lost a few good ones... Boo is currently going through a  "let's cut up everything with my new scissor skills" phase so a few of the tags were chopped up into tiny pieces before I noticed.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to It's Playtime, The Kids Co-op, Kids Get Crafty, Holiday Fun, Tuesday Tots and Christmas Countdown

Painting with shapes

My sister and I have always loved Sonia Delaunay. Her abstract and colourful compositions are gorgeous. We have a book full of Sonia Delaunay's abstract lithographs – the kids have looked at it many times, picking out the colours and different shapes.

A little bit about Sonia Delaunay: She was born in the Ukraine in 1885, grew up in St Petersburg, Russia, moved to Paris as an adult and stayed there until she died in 1979. Delaunay co-founded the French avant-garde movement Orphism. She was also the first living female artist to have a retrospective art exhibition at the Lourvre. Quite an achievement! She was an artist and designer ahead of her time, she started mixing art with fashion and designed the most wonderful geometric patterned fabrics. I often see contemporary fabric designs that are strikingingly reminscent of her work created back in the 1920s.

Delaunay's work l-r: Petit rythme couleur 1972, Swimsuit design 1929, Affreux jojo 1969

The latest Kids Get Arty presented the perfect opportunity to have a Sonia Delaunay inspired painting session.... and it was all about shapes. I pulled out as many foam shapes as I could find, we already had circles, rectangles, stars, flowers and some foam rollers. For a few extra shapes I cut up cheap sponges to make arches and semi-circles. Generous dollops of bright paint were applied to plastic takeaway lids which made great surfaces for the foam sponges to soak up the paint.

I did not supply any paint brushes and the kids didn't miss them. They really enjoyed painting with the sponges and I was impressed with the choice of colour and shapes.... but most importantly it was a fun afternoon creating for the sake of creating.

Sonia Delaunay inspired foam shape painting

Cakey, Boo and I love participating in Kids Get Arty, we have also been inspired by Kandinsky, Magritte and Australian artist Margaret Preston. For tonnes of arty ideas you might be interested in my Arty Kids Pinterest board.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to Mom's Library and Kids Get Arty

Homemade Toffee Apples

Today I am guest posting about our homemade toffee apples over at Picklebums. I would love you to take a look and while you are there you might want to check out Kate's fab blog – it is packed full of fun!

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Playing with salt

Each year Cakey's preschool puts on a wonderful art show. One of the many creative, kid-made, exhibits on show this year were tall plastic glasses filled with layers of coloured salt. They looked very pretty – Cakey wanted to make more and I wanted to try it too.

A few days after the art show I collected together all the supplies. I had no idea what the preschoolers had used for the colouring agent and Cakey couldn't remember. I resorted to liquid food colouring. We took our bowls, spoons, table salt and food colouring outside.

We poured salt into two bowls and used a tray for the third colour. I added the tiniest amount of liquid food colouring to the salt. The kids and I thoroughly mixed in the colour with a spoon and our fingers. It was a lovely sensory experience and so much fun.

When the colour was evenly dispersed through the salt we spooned it into clean, dry jars. We layered each colour to create pretty patterns in the jars. Just as we were sealing the jars tight Cakey said "actually mummy we used chalk to colour the salt". Ahhhh grated chalk would be awesome, way better than food colouring. You learn something new everyday.

And talking of salt... I wrote a guest post over at the amazing Learning 4 kids all about our salt dough boats.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to It's Playtime, Kids Get Crafty and The Kids Co-op

Christmas Advent Calendar mini envelopes

My kids are super excited about Christmas, I am rarely excited by Christmas. I let to-do lists get in the way of enjoying the Christmas lead up. Last year on the 14th of December I bought a cheap chocolate filled advent calendar. Cakey loved it, probably because she got to eat 14 days worth of chocolate in one go. This year I thought I would make more of an effort!

I love paper craft so I decided to make my own Christmas advent calendar consisting of 24 mini envelopes (x 2) filled with chocolate coins, stickers and special notes from Santa's elves. I devised a design that is hugely labour intensive... meaning that I am likely to do this only once. Having said that, it is very cute and I am happy with the way it has turned out.

The supplies (you can download the envelope template below)

I designed a printable template for mini envelopes (which you are free to download) that I printed on Christmas scrapbooking paper. Here are the steps to make them:

1. Cut scrapbook paper to fit printer.
2. Print mini envelope template on the white side of the scrapbook paper (2 envelopes to a page).
3. (optional) Score the folds with a bone folder, this makes it easier to fold the flaps later.
4. Cut around the envelope template using a scalpel or stanley knife and ruler.
5. Fold all the flaps and glue together with a gluestick.
6. Wipe up any excess glue and place the envelopes between the pages of a thick book so that they dry flat.
7. Apply the date to the front of the envelopes – I used number stamps that I found in the scrapbooking section of Kmart but you could simply write the number on in gold ink.
8. (optional) Cut rounded corners on the envelope flap using a corner cutter (I dropped my 10 year old corner cutter during this project, it smashed and I wimpered, goodbye corner cutter I will miss you).
9. Fill your mini envelopes with skinny things – I chose coins, chocolate money, stickers and little notes from Santa's elves (you can download the notes too).
10. On November 30th arrange your little envelopes for your kids to find in the morning. I am going to peg them to a little fake Chirstmas tree.

Want the template for the mini envelopes – click here
Want the little notes from Santa's elves – click here
Like the idea but think I am mad to spend my evenings cutting out mini envelopes.... yes well, my smart mother in law suggested buying those lovely bright red envelopes from Chinatown – same concept but a lot less work!

If you are in the mood to get a bit Christmassy have a look at my Christmas Pinterest Board. Stay tuned for more Christmas ideas in December – I have a few things planned. For more Christmas Advent Calendar ideas check out this post from Rainy Day Mum.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to Holiday Fun, festive friday, tip-toe tuesday and Countdown to Christmas

Big and Little..... Explorers sensory play

Big and Little is back... and this time we chose the theme Explorers. Before you read on head over to A Mom with a Lesson Plan to check out her awesome BIG backyard explorer dress up. Jillian and her kids have made some great props for their backyard adventures. go now, I'll wait.....

Now onto my little explorers sensory/pretend play set-up. I was inspired by the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury for this activity, where a family make their way through grass, water, mud and snow to find a bear.

So, early one morning while the kids were glued to the television I set up some LITTLE explorer fun. It was a total surprise to to them when they discovered four sensory stations (with a little challenge in each) set up outside:

1. A tray of GRASS clippings. The challenge: under the grass I drew 2 lines – one would lead to the next station and the other straight into the arms of a yellow monster arrrrrgh.....
2. A tub full of blue coloured WATER. The challenge: I placed a sea monster and some sharks in the tub, the kids would need to find some boats to get their figurines safely across.
3. A baking tin filled with MUD. The challenge: I placed a couple of 'poisonous' lizards in the mud, the girls would need some stones for their figurines to hop across.
4. A tray with a mountain of shaving foam as SNOW coloured with green food colouring. The challenge: find the treasure (gold coins) hidden in the mountain.

I asked the girls to pick out their favourite toy figurine and explained how this little game would work. Cakey has watched her fair share of Dora so she totally got it. Cakey started at the grassy forest and made her figurine take the challenge. Boo took one look at the whole set-up, dropped her figurine, ran around the grass, water and mud and dived straight into the shaving foam.

Cakey made her figurine go through the course over and over. I had to keep re-making the snow mountain as Boo kept destroying it before Cakey's figurines made it to the end.

Once the figurines were discarded the kids mixed all the ingredients together.... creating a lovely sensory mess!!

I hope you have enjoyed this month's Big and Little. If you want to see more about our Big and Little posts click here. If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Linked to Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, The Kids Co-op and The Children's Bookshelf