Cath Edvalson
As I sat down to write this post I could swear I heard the song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It sure does feel like we’re having a merry little Christmas this week as we celebrate the fact that our beloved, tried-and-true, ultimate resource for paper crafting the holidays, Holiday Cards & More, Volume 4, is finally on sale. And not a minute too soon, for as we all know, a paper-crafted Christmas takes some time and attention to prepare!
Inspiring your holidays since 2006
I’m here today to give you a sneak peek at the ornament section, and I couldn’t be more thrilled because ornaments are totally my thing. Since the birth of my oldest child 23 years ago, my family has been adding a unique, special ornament to our tree. We choose a Sunday a couple of weeks before Christmas, we load up the car’s CD player with our favorite carols, and we drive up the canyon to Park City where we have breakfast at our favorite joint and shop the quaint snowy streets for the coveted, group-decided-upon, most memorable ornament for that year.
How memorable would it be, however, to create handmade ornaments like these this year? I wouldn’t give up our tradition, of course, but the inclusion of handmade ornaments would be a lovely, heartfelt addition to our tree of memories:
Three Vintage Sign Ornaments by Joanne Allison, p. 157
Jingle Bell Christmas Ornament by Beatriz Jennings and Happy Holiday Co. Star Ornament by Sherry Wright, p. 151
Don’t these conjure images of a Norman Rockwell Christmas? And this is just the tip of the proverbial treetop, if you will, friends. The ornaments section of Holiday Cards & More is chock full of ornaments in every style and color palette you can imagine—something for everyone, as jolly ol’ St. Nick might say.
And because we’re all in the Christmas spirit this week, I’d love to give away the stamp set (below) from Cornish Heritage Farms that was used to create the Three Vintage Sign Ornaments. I’ve got three sets to give away, along with a copy of Holiday Cards & More, Volume 4. Just leave me a comment that tells us one of your family holiday traditions by Friday, August 28 at midnight MDT, and Christmas could come a bit early for you this year, like it has here!
Leave me a comment to win this great stamp set!
Before you go, don’t forget to stop by the Moxie Fab World today! We’re stretching our holiday style in Holiday Cards & More Week with a week’s worth of challenges that you won’t want to miss! I’ve got some g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s classy and elegant sneak peeks for you today!
Looking forward to hearing about your traditions,
~Cath
I love putting the Christmas tree up and decorating it and I love baking holiday cookies! Thanks for the chance to win!
Adorable ornaments! I need to make some of those this year!
One of my favourite Christmas traditions is PJs. We give our kids new pajamas for Christmas every year, and we always wrap them up in a package that says, “Open Christmas Eve.” Every year we tell the kids, “No, it’s not PJs this year,” and yet every year it is….year after year. They get all excited and hop into bed Christmas Eve wearing their new PJs and dreaming of Christmas morning. It makes for good Christmas morning pictures to scrapbook too
Thanks for the chance to win CHF!
Every Christmas Eve we get together with my husbands family and attend a Christmas Eve service, go out for Mexican food and open presents and have coffee and treats at my Mother In Laws home. We all look forward to this so much every year!
Taking a whole day to be together as a family decorating the tree and the house for the holiday season and then enjoying a great meal together afterward.
Our tradition revolves around cookies that we bake and swap – yum. Thanks for the chance.
We always had new pjs for the kids under the tree for Christmas Eve. Now we’ve been doing it for the dgs, but they seem to be out-growing it, too. The last couple years, it’s turned into new “sweats”! We also started with our kids buying an ornament for each of them every year. Now we do it for the dgs. My favorite, though, is that quite a few years ago, our dd bought a tiney little 2×2 inch cloth bag in a Christmas print at a bazaar. She put a gift in it for me, and the next year, I surprised her with the bag with a gift inside. Ever since, the bag has traveled back and forth between us, and the challenge every year, is to find something new that will fit in it!! After nearly misplacing it one year, on the years I have it, it goes in the box with the Christmas Stockings! ~Bev~
Without doubt the tradition that ALL of my family loves is moose milk. My husband introduced us to it and it’s knocked the sparkling burgandy we used to have right out of town!
Every year on Christmas Eve my husband, two sons and I have a special Christmas Eve dinner together before we watch a holiday movie and wait for Santa. Having boys and being the lone female means that no else appreciates all the hard work that goes into setting a beautiful table and using our best manners for this special dinner. The tradition now is to let Mom have a moment with her Christmas table before everyone comes to the table (and behave as only boys can!). I even take a picture! That way I can have the Martha Stewart Christmas I dream of (for a minute or two!) but we all can have good times together as a family.
Every year I gift my dh with a special ornament for our tree….he loves it!
Our Christmas tradition is to put the Christmas tree and outside lights up on Thanksgiving week-end. I would love to have to stamps to make some new ornaments for our tree and give some away for small gifts.
Those sign stamps are adorable!
A tradition we have is making a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas Eve. I love how it always reminds us Who we are celebrating…
Those are gorgeous ornaments! I want to make some of them EARLY for our family and close friends this year! We have a fun time the day after Thanksgiving – going out and watching all the craziness at the stores!
I love these stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms. One of my family traditions is to tell stories about the ornaments as we hang them on the christmas tree. It always bring back so much warm memories.
Love the sound of your ornament tradition Cath. One of our traditions is the children (both teenagers now) bringing their stockings down onto our bed and unwrapping each item together. After breakfast we then unwrap those presents under the tree – 1 of the children plays Santa and hands them out one by one- and we eat chocolate and listen to carols:)
Love these stamps.
We always have ambrosia at our Christmas dinner.
We started a new tradition last year with my 2 year old son of going out to a tree farm and cutting down our own tree. He was more occupied with wanting to pull the wagon that they give you for the tree, but I’m sure as he gets older he’ll really love doing it.
One of my favorite traditions is going to the Christmas tree farm and cutting down our own tree. We each pick out our favorites and then decide as a family which one to get. I love the smell of fresh cut trees!
My favorite holiday tradition is getting together with family for tortellini soup and cannoli. I come from a large italian family. My father is one of ten children. You could imagine food had to be stretched while he was growing up. My entire family gets together to actually make these tortellinis for the soup. It has become a tradition I am very proud.
I think my favorite christmas tradition is shopping on black friday.
My Christmas tree is a hodgepodge of ornaments. Every year each family member chooses their own ornament to represent something significant that occurred that year. Or if nothing big occurred, they get to choose something they like. It is cute to look through the ornaments and see the evolution of the kids’ tastes throughout the years.
Our family tradition is to buy “little somethings” all year long for each other and then stuff stockings on Christmas Eve. We open our socks Christmas morning before breakfast. Since everyone has contributed to each sock, it feels that Santa has arrived because you don’t really know where any one item came from. What a great stamp set; love the idea of creating ornaments with it.
We actually have quite a few holiday traditions that we enjoy each year with our family but I think my favorite one is this one. I started it when our daughter was less than a years old but truthfully it is my husband that continues to make it happen every year because he enjoys it so much. We all gather around together on Christmas ever right before everyone is ready for bed and read the story The Night Before Christmas together. Each reads a page and then we pass it along to the next person. We all know the words by heart but what makes me happiest about this tradition is remembering how the kids have grown and started participating more and more as the years have gone by. When we first started out the most my daughter could do was turn the page. Now she is 17 and reads it with fun expressions and drama. So cute. (You know I think I will use the above as journaling for a scrapbook page.)
Have a wonderful fab- ulous day!
xoxo, Christine
How cute are those?!?!?!?
My family Christmas holiday traditions consists of baking lots of different kinds of cookies with my Mom…. and on Christmas Eve getting together with all of my extended family on my Mom’s side. Christmas Day is spent with the immediate family.
Those little “sign” stamps make absolutely the cutest ornaments! LOVE these.
The holiday tradition that our family has is my Mom always makes fabulous fudge and you can’t eat just one piece.
Janet
OH! I love going to get the family tree, it’s my FAV!!
after dinner on Christmas Eve we put the kids in their new pj’s and go look at lights….it’s so fun to watch them get excited every year!
My hubby and I have just spent one Christmas together so far. Last year I made him help me make about 150 Christmas cards… I think that’s going to be the only tradition we have time for. And we’re planning to start in September this year…
I Love Christmas time ( except for the snow and cold weather here in Maine) I love to make cards to send to everyone.
Thanks for the chance to win an awesome stamp set.
My three daughters get together and make gingerbread houses and decorate them together. It is so much fun. The year we started doing this tradition I had made my very first gingerbread house and it was huge. The girls had bought theirs as a kit at Michaels craft store and they were small. But they where the perfect size to move around. Not mine. They called it the Martha Stewart house of houses. Good memories.
Clam chowder and sandwiches for Christmas Eve dinner at my folks’ and Christmas breakfast at my in-laws. Fortunately, we all live in the same city!
We make my Dad’s famous fried chicken on Christmas Eve! Yum!
baking something (easy) with my son to enjoy the night before christmas while opening up a present or 2!
Our family tradition is fly down to the Bahamas and spend the holidays w/ my DH’s family and open everyone’s gifts in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.
Well, it’s been having dinner with in-laws, but this year I’d like to change that. I’d like to start a new tradition just with my husband and our kids. I’m thinking about decorating/painting our windows.
One of our traditions is to give each child a new ornament for the tree each year… with the thought that they would have quite a special, meaningful collection when they start Christmas traditions of their own. Thanks!
Every year we have a spaghetti dinner on Christmas Eve and then on Christmas day we read the Christmas story before we open presents. This is something that my parents started with us as children and I have carried it over with my own children.
Our favorite traditions would have to include working in the soup kitchen and opening one present on Christmas Eve. We also sing Christmas Carols and listen to the Temptations Christmas CD!!!
Thanks
Kisha
Our favourite tradition is sprinkling reindeer food on the lawn with my 2 little girls Bonnie x
Our family tradition is to gather with our families. Christmas eve we spend time with my husbands family and on Christmas with mine.
I always had my family come to my home for the traditional holiday meals and we would go the my brother’s home to swap gifts–he had the little ones and it was such fun to see them tear open their presents.
Well, it’s not Christmas-day related, but it’s Christmas-sy. I grew up in Germany, where we celebrated St. Nikolaus Tag (St. Nicholas Day), so every December 5 evening, us kids would select a boot and leave it in front of our door, and on December 6, we’d wake up to a booty of goodies, featuring tangerines – our traditional St. Nikolaus Tag gifts. Even when we were traveling over the holiday, we’d leave out a boot, and the goodies would magically appear.
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