Twelve Days of Christmas

On the First day of Christmas . . .

We have a tradition every year to do the twelve days of Christmas for each other. We love this tradition, the kids look forward to it every year. The items that we give each other have to be hand made. Which I think brings in the true meaning of Christmas and is teaching the kids a ton about giving. It's easy to go to the store and purchase an item and be done. With having to make the item, it takes a lot of time and effort for each gift, and it brings in so much excitement for the kids, they are so busy figuring out the gift and making it, that they aren't worried about what they are getting. We drew names in October, to allow enough time to make our items (we basically have each other three times). Every day each of us have to sneak the gift into the persons stocking without them seeing us do it. In the evening after we read our Christmas book we each look in our stocking to see what we got. (Hubby had the exception this year to buy his items, since he is working and going to school full time, leaving him no time to work on projects.) The kids still enjoy the items he gives because they know he went and picked them out just for them and he was so excited this year, because he was done before the rest of us. Making the excitement to begin be even more exciting.

The gifts we give are not huge items, they are simple and from each kids heart. I help the boys, I give them ideas and they pick what they wan to do and then they make the item. This is what our oldest son made for his dad. An ornament with a picture of the kids that he can hang on the tree. It was Braxton's idea to have Caitlynn in the picture, I think it is such a sweet picture and every Christmas when we pull the ornament out to put on the tree it will bring back the fun memories of our twelve days of Christmas.

I made this Book of Mormon quiet book for Braxton. It has a picture of a story and scripture references to go with it. I thought this would be great for church. You can get the download here. It's made for a 4"x6" scrapbook, but I just used what I had on hand, and think it turn out great.

Stephen gave this to Jaden, he LOVES dinosaurs.

Kelsey made these flower pens. She picked pink because it was Caitlynn's favorite color. Which is sweet.

Jaden helped make this bracelet for Kelsey. It's made from polymer clay. We designed each bead, poked holes in each bead and baked them. We then strung them onto elastic and now she has a new cut bracelet.

I know today is actually the second day of Christmas, but since we get our gifts in the evening I will post the next day, unless I have time to do it in the evening. The kids get out of school in a week and then we can get our gifts earlier and I will post during that day.