This time of year, I get crafty.  It's the only time of year I have an irresistable impulse to make crap.   This year, I decided I'd make ornaments for my mother.  Most of her old ornaments melted in the heat last year after they moved into their new house. 

In a fit of insomnia, I decided I'd make salt-flour ornaments like I did when I was a Brownie.  

Flour Ornaments:  

2 parts flour

1 part salt

Enough water to make the dough stick to itself but not to you.  

You might want to use some cookies cutters as the basis for your design. Or you can go free-form.  It's a surprisingly easy material to work with, really.    

Bake at 300 degrees for a couple of hours, more or less depending on your oven.   

Mine looked like this before I painted them: 

 It was a mild success.  I cooked them long enough. I was smart enough to get a little artistic even.  I decided I'd make a "Donkey" (our basset hound, Opal, also answers to this. Think Shrek), and a "Dacotah" (our miniature daschund).   Here's a close up of the Dacotah version.  I agree it's not very daschundy.  It looks more like some kind of weird goat.  But I digress.  

Here's the ninja dog himself, being all cuteness:  

To paint them, just prime them with an acrylic base coat of white, paint them however you want, let them dry, and  then slap on as many layers of clear polyurethane as you can stand to put on. The more poly, the longer they last.  The only one that survived my mother's Great Ornament Disaster is a 30 year old salt flour ornament. Make sure and let all the poly coats dry for about 48 hours before you hang them.  

This is how Dacotah's finished ornament looked on the tree:    

 Today, I came home and realized that Dacotah decided to ravage the Christmas tree skirt during the night.  After I noticed this, I wandered into the living room, where I found the first family betrayal of the Christmas season.  

 The Dacotah ornament was eaten -- the only thing left a hung of the back thigh, where the cord went through.  The amazing part about this feat, besides the fact that he picked his own likeness to devour, was that this particualr ornament was placed rather high on the tree.  Too high for him to knock off just playing around.  He had to have been aiming, or something.  He had to have pulled off some seriously hard core ninja dog  moves.  All of the other ornaments are on the tree were exactly as I left them. 

 Here is the evidence.  Opal "Donkey" looks plenty guilty, doesn't she? Dacotah, in full ninja costume, is seen here running for cover immediately after I discovered the knawed Dacotah likeness. 

 My sources tell me he's planning an attack on the Donkey ornament next.