Heather’s Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas Traditions! We have lots of traditions that we have stuck with every year and hope to continue in years to come. Here are a few of our traditions:
We have a tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree! We usually purchase a $10 permit and then spend the day searching for the perfect tree…It’s an all day adventure and has been lots of fun! This year we purchased our first tree from Home Depot because of an unexpected Snow Storm…every year we have had a real tree!

After we get our tree all set up we put lights on it and decorate it and then go to bed. The morning after we set up the tree we always find New Pajamas under the tree waiting for us. Santa’s Elf’s bring them to show that they like our tree.
I love getting our pajama’s the day after the tree is set up because we can wear them all of December and on Christmas Eve!
We have another tradition of letting each of our kids pick out/buy on ornament to put on the tree. They pick an ornament each year and we write their name and year on it then when they move out they will get to take them with them.
We also get a family ornament each year although the family ornament is always a clear glass ball with a family picture from the year…I just put it together! I found a tutorial that shows how to put a picture in a clear glass ornament…it’s pretty close to how I do mine. The only difference is I just design the whole picture in Photoshop and then print it. Here is the tutorial if your interested.

We have another tradition of driving around and looking at Christmas lights…this house is one of my favorites!

We also visit Temple square each year to see the lights and the Nativity!

We also have a tradition of purchasing a Christmas book each year and reading it together. This has been a fun one…each year we have more Christmas books to read and it’s fun to look back on why we chose the certain book each year. This year our little boy picked it out and it’s all about the animals view of the birth of Christ. Our little guy LOVES animals.
We also love to send out Christmas Cards to friends and family! Here is this years:

We always read about the birth of Christ from the book of Luke and we re-enact it on Christmas eve. This has been a great way to turn the focus back to Christ and away from all the commercialism of Christmas! Here is a picture from last year:

We usually do something with gingerbread or graham crackers like make gingerbread houses this year we plan to do graham cracker nativities like this one from AOK Corral.

We also have lots of family parties and get togethers with friends and family! One of our favorite parties is when my husbands family all gathers in our home and we enjoy dinner and then sing Christmas songs and Santa visits!

Hope you enjoyed hearing about some of our traditions! I would love to hear about yours. Enjoy the upcoming Holiday and don’t forget to take some time out of all the hustle and bustle to remember the reason for the season :)
Merry Christmas!!