Christmas ornaments, Hanukah gifts and birthday party activities – there is nothing better for this than salt dough decorations. We have salt dough Christmas Ornaments from years gone by, all handmade and each one precious.

Preheat your oven to 240 degrees. Mix together 1 cup of salt, 2 cups of all purpose flour and one cup of water. Place dough on a floured counter and kneed until it is smooth and stretchy. If it is sticky, add a bit more flour until you get the correct consistency. Do not add too much flour or your decorations will crack.

Roll your dough about ¼ inch to ½ inch thick. Cut out your decorations with cookie cutters, or hand mold creations – keeping them within the same thickness. Use a toothpick to draw faces, lines or other decorations. If you plan to hang these, use the toothpick to make the hole before it is baked.

Bake the salt dough items for 2 to 2 ½ hours. You should take them out just as the sides are beginning to brown. Once cooled, these can be painted with acrylic paint. Be sure your children know these are not cookies. They won’t hurt them, but they sure will taste yucky!

I remember making homemade playdough with my mother as a child. Looking back, there was no internet at the time – so I wonder how she got the recipe! Here are two fun homemade playdough recipes that you and your children can enjoy together on a cold rainy day. Have fun!

Non-Edible Playdough: Mix together 1 cup flour, 1 tablespoon powdered alum and one half cup salt. Place the dry ingredients in a pot and add 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon oil, and two tablespoons of a nice smelling extract such as peppermint or vanilla. Cook on medium until the playdough looks a bit like mashed potatoes. Let cool. You can add food coloring if you like.

Edible Playdough: Be sure you and your child wash hands since this is edible. Stir together one cup of peanut butter, one cup of powdered milk, one cup of honey and one cup of oatmeal. Play and then eat!

Children absolutely love to make their own snow globes! They will need your help for this craft, so break out your glue gun and let's have some fun.

Use an emptied, cleaned and dried baby food jar. Using your hot glue gun, glue your "snow globe dweller" to the inside of the lid. It can be a plastic snowman, a little plastic tree, small plastic toys or anything else that will fit and is water proof. Let the glue dry.

Now have your child fill the snow globe with water and then add any color glitter you like. Place the lid on the jar and close it as tightly as you can. Put a ribbon of hot glue around the edge to stop any leaks from forming. Let your child paint the lid to make it extra special. Shake and enjoy!

This is an easy holiday craft for children and is a great gift for a teacher or grandparent. Find a nicely opened pinecone and either dip it in glue or squeeze glue around it. Then shake cinnamon over the glue. For a wonderful glimmer, spread some glitter over it as well. Allow to dry.

You can use a glue gun to place a red bow or loop on top for hanging. If you don’t have a glue gun, slide a pin through the bow and push it into the top of the pinecone.

This is a nice Christmas craft for school parties or for little ones who love to glue and sprinkle. It is a beautiful decoration and smells absolutely amazing!

With winter at our front door, food is becoming scarce for the wild birds. So the next time it is cold outside and the kids are bored, why don’t you whip up a great treat for the birds to enjoy?

Toast some bread or use stale bread for this project. Poke a hole in the bread and gently tie string to the bread. Smear both sides of the bread with peanut butter and then take the slices outside. Cover each side with bird seed and find a tree to hang up your bird treats.

When you are hanging your bread, make sure it is high enough to keep the cats away. You may also want to hang them in view of your window so you can enjoy watching the birds snack on your winter bird seed treat.

Crystals are easy to grow at home and fun to make decorations with. You can use pipe cleaners to create any shape you like. We made crystal snowflakes, but you can use your imagination to make other objects. Create homemade sun catchers, crystal butterflies or even crystal stars!

First, twist the pipe cleaners in to any shape you like. Feel free to cut some for smaller pieces. Tie a string to the middle of the pipe cleaner shape. You will be using this string to hang the object, so make sure it is long enough. Tie the other end of the string to a pencil.

Fill a wide mouth glass jar with boiling water. Pour the water in cup by cup so you know how much borax to use. Of course, supervise your children at all times near the water! Now, add three tablespoons of Borax per cup of water in the jar. Borax can be found in the laundry section of most stores. It may be named 20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Booster. Don’t use Boraxo soap, as this will not form crystals.

Stir the Borax powder until most of it is dissolved. If you like, add food coloring for colored crystals. Suspend your pipe cleaner object in to the water. If it is touching the bottom, twirl your pencil enough to move the pipe cleaners to the middle of the jar.

Let your creation sit overnight. In the morning you will find it is covered in beautiful crystals! Hang these on your Christmas tree, use them in the window to catch the sun or give as gifts to those you love.

You can make crystal shapes for each holiday! Try red crystal hearts, green crystal four leaf clovers or scary black crystal bats. These are a lot of fun to make and children love them!

This outdoor sun catcher is an easy craft that is absolutely beautiful and quite unique. The next cold day you hear your children complain they are bored, bundle them up and send them outside on a quest.

Ask them to collect pine branches, greenery, holly berries or anything else with a bit of color. Now select a dish that can be placed in the freezer with water in it. Try pie plates, bread pans or cake pans. You can even make more than one, each with a different shape.

Fill your container with one to two inches of water. Have your children arrange the items in the water. You can also use sliced orange or lemon rounds, as well as cranberries for striking color.

Cut some yarn, string or rope for a handle, placing each end in the water. If you use yarn, use at least three to four strands – this ice sun catcher is heavy!

Finally, place your creation in the freezer and try to forget it for several hours. Once your ice is completely frozen, run some water over the outside of the container to free the ice from the mold.

Hang your ice sun catcher from a nearby tree. If you made several, you will have a remarkable winter wonderland just outside your door! For a little extra fun, sneak one in to a neighboring backyard. Imagine the delight of your neighbors as they discover this beautiful piece of natural art hanging outside the kitchen window!

Swirly squishy slimey slime! What could be more fun to play with? The next time your children tell you they are bored, make a batch of this irresistible slime.

To make it, mix two teaspoons of the original Metamucil Fiber Supplement (may be labeled as "course milled") with a cup of water. Then place this mixture into a saucepan and heat it until it is boiling. Stir constantly for three minutes.

Now pour the slime into a heat-safe bowl and stir occasionally as it cools. Don't let the kids play with it until it is completely cooled!

Put an old table cloth on your kitchen table and let the children slime to their heart's content. But watch out, slime is addicting. You may find yourself sitting right next to them for a family fun filled slime fest!

Are you tired of giving the same old thing every Christmas? Earrings? Neckties? This year we have a fantastic gift idea that will be passed through your family for generations to come!

This year we are making family books for both grandmothers through http://www.cmphotocenter.com/. Of course there are several sites you can go to online for these - take your choice!

At this site, you can design custom books, create the text on each page and upload the pictures of your choice. Beautiful books can be created for about $65 that are well made and will last a lifetime.

Just picture your loved one slowly turning each page, reliving wonderful memories throughout the book. This one is guaranteed to make your mother cry - and probably you as well!

Looking for a fun Christmas or Hanukah craft this year? We absolutely love our wine bottle craft made with Christmas lights and a bit of creativity!

First, drink the wine (that was our favorite part). You can use any color or type of wine bottle. Soak the bottle in water and vinegar to remove the label. But if you like the label, you can certainly leave it on! Try blue for Hanukah with blue lights, or even clear with pink lights for baby showers… the possibilities are endless!

We used glass stones for our wine bottle decoration, but you can glue practically anything to your bottle. Try sea glass, crystal gems or even marbles to make your wine bottle as unique as you are! Use glue that will dry clear and stay firm if heated. Even an inexpensive and quick drying epoxy will do.

Drill a circular hole in the bottom back of your wine bottle. A dremel with a glass cutting bit works well. Now simply feed a small string of Christmas lights into the hole you have drilled. Turn the bottle upside down to allow the string to reach the top. You might need tweezers to grab the end and pull it out of the top of the bottle.

Take a decorative cork or stopper and push a nail into the bottom of it. Attach the light end to the nail and push the cork in to the bottle. Finish feeding the lights in to the bottle. And Voila! You have a really cool Christmas light wine bottle!

This is something we just can’t keep from showing off. A co-worker of mine just shared these pictures with me.

Several years ago he decided to start a Christmas tradition with his children by making sugar models each season. He researched sugar mold recipes until he found just the right one. Then he purchased dye used for cake decorations. And finally, he found molds online that are normally used in the movie industry to construct models for motion pictures.

This year he decided to make a sugar Hogwarts. He started in October, and as you can see, the final sugar model is absolutely amazing. Everything you see is made from sugar except for the lights and food inside the sugar Hogwarts model. My co-worker even found gargoyle molds for his creation!

The man who made this is a humble, quiet gentleman who doesn’t even want people to know he is the artist. He created this for the sheer pleasure of making something beautiful and magical with his children.

I asked permission to post these pictures without a name, and he agreed. After all, these pictures are just too beautiful not to share!

On Christmas Eve, my mother surprised the children with marshmallow shooters – aka marshmallow guns. Bowls of mini-marshmallows in hand, the cousins ran outside and began the longest and funniest marshmallow war I’ve ever seen!

Marshmallow guns are easy to make, with only one trip required to the hardware store. Simply go to the PVC pipe area and ask the staff for ½ inch PVC to be cut in the following sizes:

One 7” piece
Six 4” pieces

Then grab 2 caps, two L joints and two T joints. The staff can point these out to you. Finally, follow the picture to construct your own marshmallow gun! Of course, it is best to create two or more for some amazing marshmallow battles.

Our kids shot mini-marshmallows in two ways. First, they placed a marshmallow in the blow hole, which worked great. Then some put the marshmallow in the barrel, which also worked well and created fewer spitty wads of marshmallow. Yes, you will indeed have to pick a few gunky marshmallows out of the pipes – but this is par for the course!

Once the children had played for about 30 minutes, they began to take the PVC pieces apart and create even cooler designs for excellent marshmallow shooting fun. Try it, you will have a blast!!!

Question. What do you do when your six year old wants to use glitter IMMEDIATELY and you don't have any in the house? Make some!

Here is an easy recipe for homemade glitter - using salt! First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour either table or sea salt into a bowl. Add a few drops of food coloring and stir. Add more food coloring if needed.

Spread your "glitter salt" on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for ten minutes. Then take it out, carefully break up any clumps and let it cool. This glitter salt can be used for art, but can be used in cooking too. Just imagine green salt at Christmas, red salt on Valentine's Day and salt glitter on your child's artwork. How fun!