Christmas Stockings and Holiday Wrappings

 Christmas Stockings!

When hubby and I were still in college and had $0 money to live on and I realized we needed stockings!  Our first Christmas we spent with our families of origin and just shared the stockings we had growing up.  But we were a family now and we needed stockings of our own.  At the time we were still planning on having 8 kids, but I ran out of denim (I mistakenly thought denim would be cheap, but it is durable) after making 6, so I figured by the time kids 5-8 came along I could just make more.  Which explains why TinyLove has a different color. Each year we add a 'patch' representing something significant we have done as a family that year.  After a few years of ironing on patches over and over, year after year we switched to paint.  Now when the kids leave home they have a memory to take with them, of all the adventures we have had over the years.  As the kids get older they can start choosing their own additions instead of choosing as a family.

(Stockings 8-10 and possibly more will be made if my kids want to continue the tradition with their own kids.)

Hubby built this mantle for me last Christmas while he was on Paternity Leave. 30 years and I finally have a mantle to hang stockings on.

The first 3 have the BYU 'Y' on the toe, as we were students there.  The following year we moved to Nebraska, represented by the 'N', the house is when we moved into our first home, Louisiana when we visited the state, etc.

 

Its been a fun tradition! 

Holiday Wrappings!

Another tradition that we accidentally started deals with wrapping paper.  When gifts go under the tree with a name tag on them the kid knows who it's for and they focus their box shaking on the boxes bearing their name.  So to throw them off a bit I stopped putting names on boxes.  Each child has their own wrapping paper and they don't know which paper belongs to them until they open their PJ's on Christmas Eve.  Then they get sent to bed without a chance to shake any boxes.  Christmas morning they know which gifts are theirs based on the wrap their PJ's came in.

(And don't worry, I buy the cheap wrap so I am not spending much money on the deal.)