Christmas Year by Year

Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays to you all! Here at the Bean House we’re preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and anticipating Santa’s big trip around the world! It’s a very exciting day!

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is creating a yearly craft that helps keep track of the growth of our girls from year to year. We keep a version of these crafts for us at home, and then the girls give these handmade items to their grandparents and godparents each year. It’s a way for them to be a part of the gift-giving and they are always so proud when they give the items they worked on away to family. All in all, we end up making about six or eight total each year. It started in 2011, the year Charlotte was born, and we’ve continued to add to our collection of handmade memorabilia each year and I love it! Unpacking them from storage is always so fun, and we normally spend a couple minutes each Christmas talking with the kiddos about where each craft came from, how old they were, and how we made it.

In 2011 I tried to make ornaments with the girls. We filled some plain plastic ornaments (bought from a craft store) with glitter, attempted to get a clear hand print of the girls’ using paint (key word: attempted) and wrote the year and the girls’ names on the ornament.

I got the idea from Pinterest, and let’s just be honest… the pins on Pinterest are always way better executed than the ones we end up with. Even so, these ornaments are very precious to us and the girls love hanging their hand print ornaments on the tree each year!

In 2012 we used the girls’ feet to make a little reindeer print. I especially love this one for some reason. Look at those little bitty toe prints!

Again, grandparents and godparents got a print of this. I remember this one being particularly messy, and we had a couple of “oops” prints by the time we were done… totally worth it.

The next year we were back to handprints, but I quickly realized that my girls were getting big as their hands barely fit onto the wood cut-outs I used (again, bought from a craft store). I want to do some handprint crafts with the new bambino when he’s born so it’ll be interesting to see if I start from the beginning with him (do the ornament for 2015, then a footprint for 2016 etc.) or if I just incorporate him into whatever we happen to be doing with the girls each year. To be continued.

Originally I think my plan was to attach these to ribbon so they could hang on the wall… but I got lazy and now they just end up leaning against things. Maybe someday I’ll get all motivated and hang them up, but maybe, and most likely, not.

This year, I used the amazing pictures we got from La Cattura Photography to create a little memento for 2014. The girls took turns using their finger prints to make lights surrounding a picture of the two of them.

I can’ believe how big they are! This one might be my favorite yet because it’s so simple and it’s actually a picture of the two of them. Next year there will be three kiddos!

Do you all doing anything with your kids each year to help remember that Christmas? How about you and your special someone? Tim wants to start having the kids pick out an ornament each year so we can watch how their interests change year to year but it might be fun for he and I to also pick out an ornament for our family. New tradition in the making!