Hope your ‘trees’ are planted and standing firm!
Today we are going to make some salt dough decorations to hang on it.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of plain flour
- 1 cup salt
- Up to 1 cup of warm water
Method:
- Put the flour and salt into a bowl.
- Make a small well in the centre
Gradually add water. BEWARE; you may not need all the water! You do not need a sticky dough.- Bind the ingredients together with your hands and form a soft ball of dough.
- Lightly flour work surface
- Roll the dough out
- Use cutters, or card board templates to cut around ( I used an old circlular cutter which I bent gently into an egg shape!).
- Place shapes on baking tray.
- Re roll the dough as needed to use it all up.
- Make a small hole, all the way through the dough, a little way from the top of the shape. This will enable the shape to be hung when finished.
- Place in heated low temperature oven until firm. Leave to cool.
Now they are ready to decorate!! This is for your imagination and skills to shine! Use pens, paint, glitter and glue, feathers and beads….. As long as they shapes don’t become too heavy for the branches.
Have Fun!
Why an Easter tree?
It is a tradition in Germany to decorate the branches of trees and bushes with eggs for Easter, which is centuries old, but its origins have been lost. The egg is an ancient symbol of life all over the world. Eggs are hung on branches of outdoor trees and bushes and on cut branches inside. The custom is found mostly in Germany and Austria.
So while we are making our shapes for our trees, let us remember not only people in Germany, but people throughout the world, who are putting out eggs as decorations as a symbol of hope for the future and say thank you God for today and the fun we are having.
