We have a few traditions in our own little family each Christmas season. Kent and i have taken a few from each of our families and combined the best of both worlds. We decorate the Tree, put out our precious Nativity sets, hang lights, decorate gingerbread cookies (my friend Chelsea Robinson gave me the best recipe for soft delicious gingerbread!), decorate Gingerbread houses for their school classes, a photo with Santa, opening and constructing their Lego Advent calender each morning, as well as opening our homemade advent calender each evening, which has a joke, scripture, activity and chocolate to share, and waiting for the elf to fill the elf box on Christmas Eve.The kids look forward to these traditions each year and so do I. This year we decided to try making a Fireplace/mantle out of left over packing boxes to decorate and hang our stockings. first we stuck the boxes together, then we covered it in paper with papermache glue, then we painstakingly traced outlines for each individual brick, and lastly we mixed the paints to get the colour we wanted and applied it (next time i will use a piece of sponge cut to size.... thanks to Romney Granger for the tip!). I learnt a lot about myself during this process, the most enlightening was that i need to lighten up and not be such a control freak! Once i realized it didn't have to be perfect to be beautiful or to be something we could look at and feel pride it was a more relaxing experience. We were happy with the result and the kids loved showing it off to people who visited.
We went to Kmart as a family to pick the lights to hang out in our trees. the kids liked the blue ones so we let them decide. I also bought supplies for the gingerbread creations and we spent the following week ticking off our list of holiday traditions.
Out trip to visit "Santa" was an interesting one this year. We went to the local Harvey Norman on a Saturday morning and the kids visited with Santa. He was kind and attentive. He offered the kids a candy cane after hearing their request (wheelie shoes) and it wasn't until we got the photos back that we noticed he was missing a hat and some glasses But we live in Karratha so i'm not going to complain. I had to return a week later to collect the photo and then the kids and i framed it along side their previous years and added it to the mantle for decoration.
Here are a few pics from our traditions that we captured...
making a fairy garden (one of their activities from the advent calender)
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