Salt Dough Hearts

When I got the call that school was closed for the third day in a row, I started to panic a little! We were still at my parents' house and they were going to work, so it would be me and the kiddos all day! We'd already made valentines and pillows....then, I remembered seeing salt dough ornaments at Christmas time and thinking they were really easy and that we should try them next year. I decided to make salt dough hearts for the kiddos to paint and give to their grandparents/teachers/aunts/etc.

Here's what we did...

- Ingredients - I search the Internet for a recipe and the only difference among the recipes I found was the amount of flour to use. So in the end, we used 1 1/2 cups of hot water, 1 cup salt and 2 cups of flour. (We actually used wheat flour b/c that is what my mom had the most of, on hand.)

-We mixed the water and salt together first, and then added the flour, one cup at a time.

- I sprinkled some flour on the wax paper on the counter top and spread the dough out. I rolled it to about 1/4" thick.

-The kiddos cut out hearts with a heart shaped cookie cutter.

- We used a straw to make holes at the top of each heart (for a string to go through later) and then baked them for 2 hours at 200 degrees.

- We let them cool for awhile.
(We actually headed home at this point because out power was back up and the road was clear!!)


- Once we were settled in at home, I let the kiddos paint them using Valentine's Day-ish colors...red, pink, white and purple.

- We let them dry again!

- Once they were dry, I put ribbon through the hole, tied it and heat sealed the ends.

This was a super easy and super fun impromptu craft!! It definitely took all morning with the baking, cooling and drying that had to be done...but hey, we had all day!!