Nostalgia (Salt Dough Ornaments)

Handmade ornaments were always something to be admired and looked upon with a kind of wistful longing for the 'good old days'. Growing up we had to move often, sometimes multiple times a year, and that usually meant the handmade keepsakes were broken or lost. Over time I've come to long for those special Christmas ornaments that hand from branches as a way to say "I was here! I existed!" Hand prints in clay, photographs sealed into ornaments or even the silly "Our First Christmas" ornaments have always captured my heart. Digging through a box of old Christmas things the Shepard's mother gave us I found an ornament of a bride and groom but the only labeling on it was simply "2004" embossed with smudging glitter. I sat for a few minutes and kept wondering who they were. Were they happy? Did they fight? What was their wedding like? Did they have children? The Shepard was little help, he couldn't remember who might have been married then. I might remember to ask his mother later, but I'm very forgetful.

The moment of curious nostalgia helped me pick my craft project for today. All the time we see small children's hand prints in clay and I figured, why not do that? We own five ferrets, and two of them are getting quite old. We aren't sure how much longer they might be with us. I have pictures of them, of course, but wouldn't it be neat to have captured their paw prints in clay? It was an exciting idea, to say the least. I didn't want to use sculpy or playdoh in case something went wrong and they ate it, so I found a simple Salt Dough recipe online to make. It still wouldn't be a good idea to let them eat it, but it seemed the safest option.

Let's check it out past the jump! Warning, this is gonna be picture heavy!



The recipe for the salt dough is as follows::

2 cups Flour
1 cup Salt
1 cup Water

Mix ingredients well and once it's a uniform "dough" texture, knead it for 5 minutes. This is so the dough is soft and pliable. We rolled it out to around 1/4 inch  thick, the Shepard did that for me, I'm terrible at that part. He was all too glad to help though. While he was doing that I dug through our numerous cookie cutters for our largest and most "holiday like" one I could find. I settled on a large star for many reasons, the main one being it was the biggest we had. Shepard was so glad to help he even made sure I had room for all five stars I would need.

I wondered if he'd manage to get them all on there, with how he spaced the top three but he did wonderfully!  after that it was just a matter of cutting them out and getting them seperated from the rest of the dough, which was easy as sugar cookies. Here's what we ended up with:

I couldn't find a straw anywhere to cut holes in them with but I used a toothpick instead. It worked alright, but you have to make sure to flip it over and do the backside as well or it might not go all the way through. Now it was time for the weasels! The first one up was Vir Coto, he's our 6 year old albino who is the reason why all of this got started a day late. He apparently has Inflammatory Bowel Disease and he threw up yesterday. Some antibiotics and antinausea meds have him feeling much better already! 

He's my most well behaved of all the ferrets, so his was by far the easiest to do. He mostly just watched me with vague curiosity.

It came out pretty well, I think! I marked the back of the stars with initials for each ferret, I'm planning to paint them tomorrow once they've fully dried. 

Next up was our deaf ferret Puck. He's a fairly good boy, but he is only 2 so he's still very very rowdy. I had to scruff him in order to get his paw print made, and I seem to have forgotten to get a picture of his finished print! ((PS, please forgive my terrible, terrible nails at the moment, I've been so busy, I haven't had time to redo them at all! *sad face*))

After him was our newest ferret (Wiseman's own ferret!) but he doesn't have a name. Right now I tend to call him "Bubba Gump" because he's HUGE! He's also only around 6-8 months old. 

He actually did well, even though I had to scruff him, too. He's so young that you kinda expect the flailing. His print was really well too, but I almost made it go off the edge!

It's still really cute. I squished up the bottom just a little to make sure it kept the star shape. Ponyo was next and she let me know from the get go that she was having none of these shenanigans! 

Even scruffed she was a terrible pain for all of this, and her paw print didn't come out as nicely as I hoped, but that's Ponyo for you. She's more opinionated than any ferret I've had before and she won't hesitate to nip you (gently) if you anger her. She turned a year old this year.

She even hissed at me! Such language from such a young lady, what is the world coming to?! Hmph. Last, but not least, was my oldest girl Squee. She turned 7 this year and she's always been the best one to introduce to people who've never met a ferret before. She's gentle and playful and always tolerant no matter what you do to her. You'll notice I didn't need to scruff her at all and she was all too happy to see what Shepard was doing while mommy did whatever new silly thing she was doing now.

Her print came out the best, as if to tell the others "That's how you do it, children." I love her so much.

After that it was into the oven for 3 hours, at 200 degrees F, flipping halfway through to make sure the bottoms get dried too. You're not so much trying to cook the dough as you are trying to dry it out. I forgot to get a group picture of them all together (in my excitement I sent the Shepard off to take pictures of some of our Christmas decorations that are up and before he got back I had already put them in the oven. Oops!)

I will update this later tonight once they're out of the oven, but they are so far turning out wonderfully. I'm really pleased and there hasn't been any cracking yet (cross your fingers). What do you think? Are you ready to give it a try? I think it was a good, simple start to the crafting craziness that is to come, specially so soon after Thanksgiving. I don't think the ferrets truly cared either way, but it will be so nice to have these little keepsakes to remind myself that they were here. They touched my life in ways I can barely fathom and we loved each other so deeply that we will never truly be apart. 

Isn't that what keepsakes are about? 

I know for me, Christmas is about remembering love, kindness, generosity and forgiveness. What does it mean for you?