Letter to Santa

Of course I wrote this for Selah as she was coloring on it, but I tried to stay true to what she wanted me to write. I asked her if she wanted to write a letter to Santa and she said yes so we got out some paper and I began. "D-E-A-R, dear S-A-N-T-A, santa." I said as I wrote the letters. "What do you want to say to Santa?" "Ho, ho, ho," Selah replied. "Should we write Merry Christmas now?" "Yeah, Merry Christmas." Then I asked her what she wanted to ask Santa for. She has known the answer to this question for months. "A bike." Then she said, "A orange bike with a seat." I think it was blue two days ago, so I figure she won't mind if Santa brings her a bike that's any color. We had just been talking about how she needs her own washable markers so that it doesn't get so messy when she colors with markers so we added that to the letter and signed it. It was fun to share that with her today. It's weird to watch your kids get bigger. I'm constantly amazed by the things she does each day. After writing the letter this morning we made salt dough ornaments. It was fun to roll out the dough and cut out the shapes. Selah loved being a helper and deciding which shapes to use. Oh, and she also seems to love the mess!

Recipe for Salt Dough Ornaments

1/2 cup salt

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 250. Combine ingredients then knead dough on floured surface, adding flour if dough is sticky. Roll out dough to about 1/4 inch and cut out with Christmas cookie cutters. Place on cookie sheet and bake for 2 hours. Allow to cool, then paint with acrylic paints and decorate with glitter glue or glitter paint if desired. We made just over 20 small ornaments with our dough. The more you roll out the scraps, the more the ornaments will crack on the surface.

Merry Christmas!