One of my favorite Christmas traditions is one that is fairly unique to my family. I’m sure other people do these, but I haven’t seen any.
Back in 2000, when Kieran was 1 year old we bought a cheap tree skirt. I say cheap because it was literally the cheapest one we could find, and even then it was a stretch for our meager budget to purchase it. I wanted to make it look nicer and thought if we put our hand prints on it it might spruce it up. So we took some fabric paint and did just that. My only regret is that the original skirt is cheap felt. It wasn’t the best fabric for what would become my family treasure.
That first year it was just Jason, me, and little Kieran. So Jason and I did our hand prints too. By the second year Katarina had joined us. We did her feet prints because she was only a few weeks old. Every year we have added our children’s handprints (except when they are too little then it’s foot prints – even Karyssa who joined us on Dec 26 at 12:15am has her foot prints).
I added another layer a few years ago when we ran out of room. And I see that this year we filled up that extra layer. So, sometime after Christmas I will sew a new layer to the bottom so it’s ready for next year.
This is a silly idea I had many, many years ago. But it has turned into literally one of my greatest treasures. I absolutely LOVE being able to look at all my kids’ hand prints and how they’ve grown! And they love comparing their hands to their siblings and seeing how much they’ve grown each year. This tree skirt ranks right up there with my photo albums in terms of significance to me.
I will keep this treasure, and use it every Christmas until I die! And who knows, but one day I may be privileged to be able to add my grandkids hand prints to this tree skirt…