Homemade Gifts and Goodies for Christmas

As per usual, I had been brainstorming (for months!) about what to make as handmade treats for friends and family this year.    Pinterest was a daily go-to for me and it created an overzealous monster with far too many ideas!

As per usual, I made a lot of Christmas candy (Rocky Road fudge, pecan and coconut caramels, and English toffee) and sent them out.

To get Ramsey involved in a project, we made salt dough and "Better Than Salt Dough" (though, in the end, we found it actually wasn't any better!) to create Christmas ornaments for the grandparents and friends.  It proved to be a huge mess (Ramsey and I both needed baths immediately afterwards!), but it was a fun sensory and bonding project for both of us.

 Ramsey thought that rolling out the dough was pretty awesome!  I was impressed how well he used the rolling pin.  Perhaps he will become a pastry chef someday!?!

 Cutting out the shapes was fun too!

Along with the shapes, we were going to get impressions of Ramsey's hand prints.  Ramsey took it upon himself to go one step further and stick his feet in the dough to make footprints!

Here are a few of the ornaments we made, prior to being painted.  This is one small batch from the Better-Than-Salt dough.  Ramsey stuck his finger in all of them, numerous times, finding it quite amusing!  He certainly left his mark.

Here's a pic of the painted and finished footprints with a decoupaged poem on the back.   These were presents for the grandparents.   I was amazed at how huge his feet are!

 We made two larger batches of salt dough, whereas we made more footprints, but also made angel ornaments.  

 Ramsey made the cuts for the ornaments and helped me imprint them with an angel rubber stamp.  Then, they baked to harden, were sanded to alleviate rough edges, were "glitter-fied", decoupaged with various angel verses on the back, then finalized with a sparkly ribbon to hang them.

With my little helper merely "watching" this time (while gaming and playing with toys on the kitchen floor), I created all-natural and organic Peppermint and antioxidant body scrubs, natural foaming hand soaps, and dozens of natural Lavender bud and lemon bubbling bath bombs.   Very... complicated... and time-consuming butterfly cupcake bath bombs.   Ok, maybe just more tedious and time-consuming than complicated.

I boxed them all up into cute little individual cupcake boxes, then tied a gift tag onto them, and off they went, to friends, family, and Eric's female co-workers (or the male coworkers' wives).

As fun as they turned out, next time, I think I'll stick to straight-up bath bombs, nixing the Royal icing, glitter, add-ons, and specialty boxes.  :-)   There's something to be said for "keeping it simple"!  And, me keeping my sanity.  :-)