Pumpkin crafting

It is well known to those who know me that I do not like holiday decorations at my house.  Before you jump to conclusions, let me clarify, I do thoroughly enjoy holiday decorations at other peoples houses.  In fact, I even love to drive around and look at decorations that people put on the outside of their houses also.  But for me to put up decorations....not happening.  I put up a Christmas tree every year-even though we have never spent one Christmas at our own house because we are always out of town.  That is the extent of my decorating.  Decorations are just not my thing.  Period.  

In stark contrast to that, I love making holiday crafts with my children.  Usually, we give our crafts away as gifts (I know...those lucky people) but they are made with love by the girls.  Or we make them so we can hang them on our only decoration...the Christmas tree.  

I don't usually do Halloween crafts with the girls, mainly because we never have time since we are usually in school during this time.  Now that we are on fall break, we have had plenty of time to do some crafting.  Yesterday we decided to make clay pumpkins.  My only experience with this was in elementary school when I made a pumpkin that my teacher fired in a kiln.  I do not have a kiln so that was out of the question.  I found a recipe for salt dough (super easy...just salt, flour, and water).  In typical fashion, I added red and yellow food coloring,to make them orange, and pumpkin spice to the dough to make it a prettier color and better smelling.  

After mixing the dough together, it was really hard to work with.  We had to let it set for a little while to dry out before we could begin working with the dough.  We used different kitchen tools to shape and "carve" the pumpkins.  

After the girls got done with their pumpkins, I gave them a bit of a face lift.  Even pumpkins need to look their best.  We baked them in the oven at 170° varying the openness of the oven door for about three hours and then completely closed for the fourth hour.  

They are still not completely dry yet. But when they are, I have the perfect little shelf for our very first Halloween decorations.