Homemade Ornaments

On the Seventh Day of Blogmas

Hey, belles & beaus!

So last night was the NAAC of Alpha Omicron Pi’s annual Christmas party. It’s pretty much the same every year. We meet at someone’s house – whoever has volunteered to host it -, eat delicious food, drink wine, and share gifts.

Last year I told y’all how we do the gift exchange where we all bring five gifts that are the same but it’s one of our favorite things. We then select five names at random – everyone has turned their name in five times – and that is who receives the gift! Each sister shares why her gift is her favorite thing.

I stuck with my theme from last year. Although Halloween is my favorite holiday, I love to decorate for all holidays! Last year, I gifted five of my sisters a tea towel and matching Christmas mug. This year I shared some of my favorite homemade ornaments. I honestly discovered the recipe on Pinterest so I apologize for not being able to credit the original creator of this recipe! I have it written down so I didn’t even print it.

The recipe is extremely simple: 1 cup of apple sauce and 1 cup of powdered cinnamon. Now I add 2 teaspoons of ginger into mine because I’m obsessed with ginger and the smell of it. The only extra things you need are a skewer – like you do shrimp and such on -, string/ribbon – I use the red & white package twine that you can get at Hobby Lobby -, scissors to obviously cut the string or ribbon you’re using, parchment paper for baking, and baking sheets.

The applesauce and cinnamon make a dough so to speak. You simply roll out the dough like you would if you were doing cookie dough and cut out the shapes using cookie cutters. I don’t recommend using reindeer however, they just don’t balance well and there aren’t many options of where to make the holes.

Once you’ve cut your shapes out, you carefully slip the skewer through them wherever you believe is best and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. The parchment paper. You’re oven should be warmed to 200ºF – now this is all dependent upon your location in relativity to the sea level so you could need your oven warmer or cooler depending upon this. You bake them until they are rock hard which can take anywhere from an hour to two hours. These can also be left out on their own to dry-bake over several days but I prefer to bake them in the oven. The house smells like Christmas to me as they bake!

Those are the gifts I shared this year and they are the easiest things to make! I also find that giving a homemade gift is much more thoughtful.