You won't want to lick the spoon with this recipe...

One presentation, two exams, and one paper stand between me and the end of the semester.

That's still a lot. Blergh.

It's honestly not that bad though. Without Facebook, I feel as if I have oodles of time. I underestimated how much time I used to spend on it. It's kind of sad. Now when I open up my laptop I don't even know what to do with myself. I still spend a good amount of time nerding out on foodgawker, of course.

Since I'll have a good deal of extra time once finals are over, I needed to find something to keep myself busy.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to welcome you to...

CRAFTMAS 2011

This is what my Friday night consisted of. 

You know, just livin' the dream.

After getting my tree last night, I'd been brainstorming ideas for cheap ways to decorate it. I need to save my money for presents for my family, not for ridiculously expensive bird ornaments from Anthro (even though they're adorable.) I didn't want to string popcorn because Casper would eat it. I also have a very short attention span when it comes to crafts, so I needed something that wouldn't be ridiculously time consuming.

As usual, The Gluten-Free Girl came to the rescue. 

Earlier today I checked out this post by Shauna. How could I forget about salt dough? This may be considered a kid's craft project, but who says it isn't appropriate for broke college students, too?

How cool are these?

To make these, I mixed together:

2/3 cup brown rice flour

2/3 cup white rice flour

2/3 cup potato starch

1 cup kosher salt

Little less than 1 cup of water

Earlier, I noticed a rather uncalled-for comment on Shauna's post for these homemade ornaments. In a rather rude manner, someone asked why do these need to be gluten-free if no one is eating them (you can, but you might as well be tasting a salt lick).

Well, they don't need to be. All-purpose flour would be just fine, I assume. 

But, if you have Celiac's or are super sensitive to gluten, cross-contamination can be a serious issue. I personally wouldn't want to use non-gluten-free flour in my kitchen because it could accidentally be incorporated into my other baking products. Plus, I would feel silly if I bought some, when I have plenty of GF flours on hand. 

Anyways! One thing I did differently is I added food coloring to my dough, because I didn't feel like buying paint. I had no idea how cool it would turn out!

However, I didn't use any tools to mix and now my hands look like they're straight out of Woodstock. 

I cut mine out with a Ball jar lid, poked a hole in them with a wooden skewer, baked them at 200 degrees F for two hours, then allowed them to dry out in the oven for another hour.