a Christmas tradition

Last year I started something which hopefully will become a long lasting Christmas tradition in our household.

An ornament made or personalized by Micha. 

Last year, when he was a squishy five month old, we decorated a wooden Christmas tree ornament with his little fingerprints.

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It isn't a new tradition I'm following, when I was young we would make all kinds of ornaments and garlands for in the tree. Remember popcorn garlands, and paper snowflakes, or those paper chains?

Every year we would make new decorations and hang them in the tree together with the ornaments made in years past.

And every year my favorite thing to make for our tree were salt dough ornaments.

My siblings and I would roll out the dough and cut out stars, bells and santa's until our hands were white with salt.

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So this year I thought it would be fun to make a salt dough ornament with Micha with his hand print on it.

I was certain Micha would love playing with the left over dough, just like I used to,

thus making it a fun winter day activity.

I was wrong.

Micha was absolutely disgusted by it and after I was able to quickly force his hand onto the dough for the ornament he didn't want anything to do with dough at all!

Which I find so strange because his favorite way to eat his oatmeal in the morning is with his hands.

I never figured him to be so squeamish with a little salt dough.

Strange boy, that son of mine!

Anyways, I was able to make a cute (but because of said squeamishness not very clear, oh well) hand print on the dough and used stamps to add his name and the year.

With the left over dough I made some stars to add to our tree.

I painted the ornaments white and sprinkled some glitter over top.

'what ís this stuff? '

last years ornament

And now they're hanging all pretty and sparkly in the tree!

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I love little traditions like this and I hope that when we're old and gray our tree will be full with handmade and sentimental ornaments made by Micha (and if God blesses us with more babies, their ornaments too!)

Love, Maria

p.s. I used this recipe/tutorial for the ornaments.