Hardtack Ornaments

• 1). Mix 2 cups flour with just enough water to make a stiff dough.
  
  
• 2). Roll the dough 1/2-inch thick and cut it into squares.
  
  
• 3). Prick the squares with a skewer, marking a grid or other desirable pattern, such as wheat sheaves, a heart, stars or daisies.
  
  
• 4). Poke one larger hole at the top of each biscuit so that you can string it later.
  
  
• 5). Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, before reducing the oven's temperature to 300 degrees for another 10 minutes. Reduce heat again, to 250 degrees, and bake for an additional 20 minutes.
  
  
• 6). Allow the hardtack to cool overnight, then bake it again at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes to remove as much remaining moisture as possible.
  
  
• 7). Cut 10-inch lengths of leather cord or jute twine and thread each biscuit.
  
  
• 8). Hang the biscuits on a tabletop tree.
  
  

Hans Lauer Christmas Pickle

• 1). Make a Christmas pickle ornament by squeezing a fist-sized piece of self-hardening clay in your palm after rolling it into a cylinder. Pinch and rub the clay until it has bumps like a dill pickle.
  
  
• 2). Hold the clay pickle in your closed palm while you push a crayon or the eraser end of a pencil into one end to make it hollow, stopping 1 inch from the other end.
  
  
• 3). Poke an ice pick through the solid end of the pickle to make a pair of 1/8-inch diameter holes for stringing.
  
  
• 4). Allow the pickle to dry for three to five days, or until the clay turns white.
  
  
• 5). Apply three coats of green acrylic paint to the pickle, allowing the paint to dry overnight between coats.
  
  
• 6). String a ribbon through the holes made by the icepick and hang the pickle deep in the branches of your Christmas tree.
  
  
• 7). Encourage children to hunt for the pickle and give a small, wrapped, homemade prize to the child who finds it first.
  
  

Paper Ornaments

• 1). Cut Victorian-themed Christmas cards into hearts, stars or circles, or follow the lines of the main objects or people on the cards.
  
  
• 2). Punch a hole at the top of each shape. String ribbon through the holes to make hangers.
  
  
• 3). Cut hearts, stars, doves or angels from brown paper bags or used manila envelopes to create Confederate paper ornaments.
  
  
• 4). String the ornaments with hemp or jute twine.
  
  

Thomas Nast Santas

• 1). Make Thomas Nast Santas by tracing the Santa figure from Thomas Nast's "Santa Claus in Camp," originally published in the January 3, 1863 edition of Harper's Weekly, onto shirt cardboard or balsa wood.
  
  
• 2). Paint or hand-color Santa's coat and hat royal blue with white stars.
  
  
• 3). Paint or hand-color red and white vertical stripes on Santa's pants.
  
  
• 4). Punch or drill a hole at the top of your Santa and string it with red, white or blue satin ribbon.