Rose ‘n’ Salt Dough Finger Prints For Mother’s Day

Precious little hands stay tiny for such a short while.  I am so in love with making a keepsake of this very special time, of those amazingly beautiful little fingers and palms.

Pink rose petals in this dough are to symbolize love and motherhood, plus they give the dough a very delicate fragrance.

I did this simple little project both at home with my girls and at the preschool, making two different versions.  At home we made a big plaque with both my big girls hands pressed into the dough, their thumbs overlapping.  The kids at the preschool cut out hearts from the rosy salt dough and pressed their fingers into the dough.  Both versions are totally cute and precious!

~ Materials ~

This makes enough dough for 15 hearts about 2″ by 3″ and one 8″ by 6″ plaque.  You can cut the recipe it in half if you want!

• 4 cups of flour
• 2 cups of salt
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups of water, rose tea or rose-water for fragrance
• 2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup of fluffy pink rose petals
• straw
• heart-shaped cookie cutter, optional
• ribbons
• sharpie marker, optional

~ Instructions ~

• Blend together the flour, salt,  cream of tartar and rose petals.  

• Next add the water a little bit at a time until you get a nice doughy consistency that holds together but is not sticky.  I did this all in my Kitchen Aid the night before going into the preschool and it was easy!  You could certainly mix this up with the kids too, which I am sure they would enjoy.  

• At this point you are ready to make your shapes and prints, or you can refrigerate the dough in an air tight bag if, like me, you won’t be using it until the next day.  

• Roll or press the dough out.

• Either shape the dough to desired shape or cut out heart shapes with your cookie cutter.

• Press the child’s hand into the dough.  You may need to talk with them about spreading their fingers apart.  Most of the kids I worked with instinctively placed their hand on the dough with their fingers all held together.  Also you may need to help them press their fingers into the dough.

• Use the straw to poke a little hole for hanging.

• Dry these in the oven at a low temp for a couple of hours.  Be sure to keep a close eye on them and flip them half way through the drying process.  Or you can let them air dry for a couple of days.

• Use the sharpie to write the child’s name and their age or the date on the back of the heart/plaque and add a pretty ribbon for hanging.

You could also paint these with modge podge to preserve them.  Or you could let the kiddos paint them to add a nice little personal touch.  Because we used the roses we aren’t going to paint ours so we can see and smell the roses!

A little poem to go with this sweet gift would be a lovely addition.  I found all a wonderful collection of poems on Can Teach.  Most of them make me tear up thinking about my own little ones growing up so very fast!

More Ideas for Mother’s Day Gifts ~

Some Sweet Foot Lovin’ For Mother’s Day

When I was researching this project I found a lot of wonderful salt dough recipes to choose from.  Here are two that I used the most for inspiration:

Create, Craft, Love and eHow Mom

Are you making gifts for Mother’s Day this year?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Shared On:  It’s Playtime!, Eco-Kid’s Tuesday, The Kid’s Co-Op, Kid’s Get Crafty, Friday’s Nature Table

Rose And Chocolate Play Dough For Valentine’s Day

Who doesn’t love roses and chocolate on Valentine’s Day?

Here is a fun, crafty way to share these two Valentine Day favorites with the kids in your life.

 

Rose Play Dough

Colored with beet powder and bedecked with silver glitter!

Ingredients ~

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 1 cup of water (can substitute rose tea or rose-water if desired)
• 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tbsp oil
• about a 1/4 cup dried rose petals crushed a bit
• about a 1/4 cup beet powder or powdered roses
• 5 to 10 drops of rose geranium essential oil (how many drops depends on your nose!)

Instructions ~ Combine dry ingredients in a sauce pan.  Add the water and oil.  Stir together and heat slowly over low heat.  Stir almost constantly until the play dough sets up.  Let it cool to warm before playing, play dough right off the stove is hot.

Chocolate Play Dough

Ingredients ~

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 1 cup of water (can substitute rose tea or rose-water if desired)
• 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder, add more if needed
• 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 5 to 6 drops any combination of cocoa absolute and sweet orange essential oils, if desired.
• Splash of vanilla extract

Instructions ~  Follow the instructions above for making rose play dough.

Double, triple or quadruple these recipes if making play dough for a large group.

 

Fun Ways To Use Valentine’s Day Play Dough ~

• Make little “treats” for your child to hand out at school.  Wrap a small ball (or make into little hearts) of each kind of play dough in a plastic bag, tie with a lovely ribbon and add a little heart-felt note to complete the Valentine.  Makes a wonderful substitute for the sugary candy treats normally handed out this time of year.
• Take a nice big batch of each play dough into your child’s school or to a playdate and let the kids enjoy.  Supply baby rose buds, cinnamon sticks, glitter and heart cookie cutters to enhance play.
• Give a batch to your little one on Valentine’s Day, makes a great present.

More please….

Valentine’s Day Crafts:

• Rosebuds Crowns and Hearts
• Roses at Preschool for Valentine’s Day
• Rose Hearts

Play Dough Recipes and Crafts:

• Cinnamon Day
• Herbal Play Dough
• A Happy First Day of Preschool With Calming Aromatherapy
• Super Fun Homemade Gift Idea For Little Ones

Happily Shared On:  The Kid’s Co-op, Share It Saturday, Kid’s Get Crafty

Cinnamon ‘n’ Spice Ornaments Herb Style

Here is our second round of cinnamon ‘n’ spice ornaments!  We had so much fun coming up with ways to decorate using botanicals.  Check out my other post Cinnamon ‘n’ Spice Ornaments Craft Style for full instruction on how to make this aromatically stimulating craft.  Trust me these are easy, stimulate a lot of imagination in kids and smell amazing!  You won’t be disappointed.

We found that using herbs to decorate worked best in two different ways:

• First, if you want to press the botanical into the ornament while it is wet, like with cloves or rose buds, it is best to leave the ornament in the cookie cutter while you and placing the botanical.  Otherwise the dough kinda of falls apart and then you have to start all over again.
• Second, you can simply glue the herb to the ornament once it is dry.  This worked best for star anise, lavender blossoms and hawthorn berries.  A hot glue is the best choice for attaching large pieces while you can use school glue for small things like lavender blossoms.

My little one tried her hand at carving a shape.  It was a good experiment.

Unfortunately, it did hold together as well as the ornaments we cut out with cookie cutter.

For this one we pressed cloves around the edge and then let the ornament dry before hot gluing a lovely star anise in the center.

I love little baby rose buds, don’t you?

These all had little stems that we pressed into the dough.

This was super easy.  Once the ornament was dry we covered the top with a thin layer of white glue and pressed lavender blossoms all around the top.  I think this would be lovely done with something like anise seeds too.

Decorated by my sweetie with hawthorn berries and cloves.

Kids love to decorate gingerbread people!

Another creation.  This one has a bit of star anise for a smile.

The two gingerbread people are “married” according to their little creator.

 

Christmas tree complete with a shining star on top!

We love crafting for the holidays!  Do you enjoy making things with your kids?  I would love to hear about it!

Happy Holidays!

Cinnamon ‘n’ Spice Ornaments Craft Style

Combine a lot of cinnamon with some applesauce and what do you get?  A delicious smelling dough for crafting!  Add some ginger, cloves and orange essential oil and the dough becomes incredibly fragrant, almost enchanting in its olfactory expression.  Oh my…

These lovely ornaments are decorated with crafty stuff like glitter and glue. Next week, after I have a chance to make some of these with my kids, I will have a post about ornaments decorated with herbie stuff for a more natural look!

We made these ornaments at preschool to decorate for our holiday show this Friday night.  When I brought in an example ornament the kids all exclaimed, “Cookie!”  Which prompted a discussion about if  it would be OK to eat our ornaments.  Once I was sure the kids would refrain from taking a nibble, we started making our dough.  As usual we sat in a circle on the floor to work together bringing all us right in to the activity.

Making The Ornaments

Ingredients ~

• 1 1/2 cups of ground cinnamon (can be expensive right?  I got mine in a huge jar at Costco for $3!)
• 1/2 cup of other ground spices such as ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom and cloves.  We used cloves and ginger a 1/4th cup each to make our super yummy smelling ornaments
• 10 drops of sweet orange essential oil
• 1 to 2 cups of applesauce
• 4 Tbsp school glue, like Elmer’s

Instructions ~

Put all your ingredients in a bowl starting with 1 cup of applesauce and mix it up.  (We passed the bowl around our circle so everyone got a chance to stir and smell our creation up close.)  You want the dough to be firm and a bit wet.  It will be sticky but not so sticky that it is hard to work with.  If it is too dry and crumbly, add more applesauce a little at a time.  If it is too wet, add more cinnamon.  Next dust a table with some cinnamon and then dump the dough out on the table.  You can either roll it out or just pat it down until it is about a 1/4″ thick or so, if you make it thinner than  1/4″ your ornaments will be more likely to break.  Trust me, I know!  Let the kiddos help you pat it down if they want, they like this part.  If your dough is cracking when you roll/pat it out then it is too dry so add a bit more applesauce.  No need to put it back in the bowl, you can just mix it on the table.

After you have your dough flatten out to a 1/4″ or so, then it is time to cut shapes with cookie cutters.  Let the kiddos cut out their shape and the use a straw to make a hole in the ornament for a string to go through.

Using a spatula place the ornament on a cookie sheet or drying rack and let it dry for a few days.  You can also place them in a 170 degree oven for a few hours to dry being careful to check them and turn them often so they don’t burn.  Once they are dry, they are ready to decorate or to simple hand with a pretty ribbon.

Ideas For Decorating ~

Crafty

• glitter
• glitter glue which could be like “piping” frosting on a cookie
• small pom poms
• sequins
• small gems
• paint, don’t cover completely or you may lose the smell
• beads to decorate a ribbon or chenille stem for hanging

Herbal 

• cloves ~ can you shove them into the dough before it dries?
• rose buds
• lavender blossoms
• anise stars
• elder berries or other berries

We didn’t use any of these at the school and I am excited going to experiment at home with my kids!  

We finally had time to play!  Check out our herbie decorated ornaments!

My nightmarish experience with cinnamon ornaments and eight little preschoolers….

In some ways these couldn’t be simpler to make but I must confess that I had a bad time trying to make these a few years ago when I started teaching at the preschool.  Here is what happened…  After making a succesful test batch at home with my little girl, I went into the preschool all ready to have a fun day with the kids.  Unfortunately, when we made our dough it was too sticky so we needed to add more cinnamon.  Problem was, all the cinnamon was gone.  So we added flour.  Not a good idea.  The dough became very sticky and the kids had their hands in it at the time.  So there I was with eight freaked out little kids, hands covered in globby goop.  Luckily the other teachers at the school helped out and we got everyone cleaned up in no time.  Whew!  So it was with a bit of trepidation that I made these this year at the school and I am so glad I did!

More Ways To Play With Cinnamon:

• Cinnamon Day ~ Herbs For Kids
• Grapevine Magic
• Spiced Apple Head Puppets
• Information about the Properties of Cinnamon

Shared On: The Kid’s Co-op, The Imagination Tree

Natural Living Monday #14 ~ A Gift Of Health

The perfect gift of knowledge and beauty for anyone interested in herbal knowledge and healthy living!

Have you heard of Rosemary Gladstar?  Read any of her books?  She is an absolutely amazing herbalist, simply inspiring in a nourishing love filled kinda way.  Her books are infused with a plethora of knowledge that is easy to understand and relate too.  Her beautiful book, Family Herbal, A Guide to Living Life With Energy, Health and Vitality is no exception.  Filled with lovely pictures, stories and herbal tips this book is a great introduction to the world of herbs while also being a valuable resource for those more experienced with plant medicine.  Broken down into chapters for every member of the family this book has wonderful ideas for addressing everyone’s needs.  There are also sections brimming with ideas for healthy eating, help with stress, body care recipes and remedies for times when we need a bit of herbal help such as during a cold or flu.

image via Amazon

 

Rosemary also includes a materia medica section complete with many favorite and useful plants as well as a section on making herbal medicines.  Through out the book you will find beloved wonderful recipes from Rosemary to try in your own home like:

• Rosemary’s Perfect Cream
• Longevity Tonic and Chai
• Chamomile Tisane
• Energy Balls

Her recipes are easy to follow and produce wonderful medicines.  She often provides the reader with special little tips for medicine making success.

This is truly one of my favorite books.  Full of inspiration and wisdom, it is a delight to read and use.

And now….

Welcome to Natural Living Monday here we share all our natural living tips, tricks, and fun ideas.

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Thank you for joining us on Natural Living Monday! I am excited to see the great things you have been doing to live a more natural, whole, holistic life.

Your Hosts:

Amanda from Natural Living Mamma

Katie from Mexican Wild Flower

Angela from Mama Rosemary.

Last weeks most popular posts were:

Winter Wear from The Vagabond Studio

DIY Vapor Rub – Baby Safe by Slightly Steady

2012 Soulicious Gift Guide

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