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I love a polite Santa. That is awesome. How do you leave "soot" prints?
By the time Christmas comes we have used the fire place a few times...and we do not clean out the bottom so we have enough "soot" to do footprints with. You take Daddy's boots and dampen the bottom (you have to do this for each print) and dip wet boot in soot and print on floor (please note: we do not have carpets!) and leave a trail to the tree. I have a friend with dark carpets that uses baby poweder to make prints...her kids like that. And another that uses glitter sprinkled from front door (she doesn't have a fire place) to tree...because Santa being magic and all he leaves a trail of magic dust. All good, the kids love it!
Well first of all Christmas is my most favorite time of the year. We put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. The boys and their dad go to a farm (tree farm) and pick out the tree, cut it down and bring it home. Then we set it up to let it sit overnight for the branches to settle...nothing like that pine scent. My husband always picks out a tree that is way too big so I get lots of bottom branches cut to make a wreath out of as well.
...I can't wait for Christmas!
I LOVE all of your rituals!! I'm gonna take quite a few of them and incorporate them into our family. Love the Christmas sheets and bedspreads!! The jammies are a great idea too. And all the changes with photos! Gotta start shopping for that stuff now! Better hit qvc.com!
Something we do every year is make a coffee cake and have a special plate to put it on. The kids get to see the Christmas tree and stockings first thing, but before doing any presents we all traipse into the kitchen, sit at the table, light a birthday candle on the coffee cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus. This was something my wife did as a kid and we incorporated it into our traditions. It's not Christmas at our house without Jesus' birthday coffee cake!
And we have a artificial tree that looks SO real it's amazing! I begin putting it together Thanksgiving evening because it takes a few hours just to get it up. Then of course I save the lights for the next day because I spend at least three hours putting lights on the tree. It's always a challenge to see if I can get more lights on the tree each year. We do the colored small lights and oh how they twinkle at night time. LOVE Christmas!! We'll have to make a thread in about a month or so to show off all our trees and decorations! I want to see Irishmom's bathrooms!! You and your husband sound like the king and queen of Christmas fun!
By the time Christmas comes we have used the fire place a few times...and we do not clean out the bottom so we have enough "soot" to do footprints with. You take Daddy's boots and dampen the bottom (you have to do this for each print) and dip wet boot in soot and print on floor (please note: we do not have carpets!) and leave a trail to the tree. I have a friend with dark carpets that uses baby poweder to make prints...her kids like that. And another that uses glitter sprinkled from front door (she doesn't have a fire place) to tree...because Santa being magic and all he leaves a trail of magic dust. All good, the kids love it!
Soot prints might be the most awesome thing I've heard of. I can only imagine the look on their faces..
Funny story.. I used to leave milk and cookies out for santa when I was little. One xmas night my dad was up putting out the presents.. I heard him and I totally thought it was santa. Then my dad passed gas... so I totally thought santa had done that while putting my presents out..
Last edited by june 7th; 10-12-2007 at 10:14 PM..
Reason: it was just a judgement call....sorry!
We used to make Santa's footprints by dipping my husban'd big work boots in flour and making tracks across the carpet. I would pretend to be really annoyed about the cookie crumbs all over the table and the "mess" on the floor, "That Santa did it again!", then Id let out a huge sigh.
I LOVE all of your rituals!! I'm gonna take quite a few of them and incorporate them into our family. Love the Christmas sheets and bedspreads!! The jammies are a great idea too. And all the changes with photos! Gotta start shopping for that stuff now! Better hit qvc.com!
Something we do every year is make a coffee cake and have a special plate to put it on. The kids get to see the Christmas tree and stockings first thing, but before doing any presents we all traipse into the kitchen, sit at the table, light a birthday candle on the coffee cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus. This was something my wife did as a kid and we incorporated it into our traditions. It's not Christmas at our house without Jesus' birthday coffee cake!
And we have a artificial tree that looks SO real it's amazing! I begin putting it together Thanksgiving evening because it takes a few hours just to get it up. Then of course I save the lights for the next day because I spend at least three hours putting lights on the tree. It's always a challenge to see if I can get more lights on the tree each year. We do the colored small lights and oh how they twinkle at night time. LOVE Christmas!! We'll have to make a thread in about a month or so to show off all our trees and decorations! I want to see Irishmom's bathrooms!! You and your husband sound like the king and queen of Christmas fun!
See now I could totally get into singing happy birthday with a coffee cake...I love coffee cake. My kids know it's the day Jesus was born (or at least the day we celebrate it) but have never wanted to sing happy birthday...they do say a prayer. I don't think Jesus minds too much because it's not just him...they won't sing to me on my birthday either.
Now for Christmas Bedding and PJ's....some great places to get them are Domestications, BrylaneHome, Disney, LLBean, The Pajama Company....If you google there are lots of places to get them. I have also done Target...but it's hard to get matching for the little guy there...and he gets mad if he doesn't exactly match. When it's all up I'll post pictures...maybe not of me in pj's though.
Soot prints might be the most awesome thing I've heard of. I can only imagine the look on their faces..
Funny story.. I used to leave milk and cookies out for santa when I was little. One xmas night my dad was up putting out the presents.. I heard him and I totally thought it was santa. Then my dad passed gas... so I totally thought santa had done that while putting my presents out..
Ha Ha!! Yeah Santa around here does that a lot too.
I try to go all out with the Santa thing because it doesn't last long, and since I am actually having my childhood now with my kids...well I want it to last forever.
We used to make Santa's footprints by dipping my husban'd big work boots in flour and making tracks across the carpet. I would pretend to be really annoyed about the cookie crumbs all over the table and the "mess" on the floor, "That Santa did it again!", then Id let out a huge sigh.
Oh that sounds great...I can just see you putting on your act...sounds great! If I tried to leave crumbs out the dogs would eat them anyway...one year my oldest (he was 4 then) took about 30 mintutes to find the perfect spot for the cookies because he was afraid Lucy would eat them before Santa got there...Santa of course included a thank you for the careful placement of his snack in his annual letter.
I don't know if it was because I grew up a military brat and moved around alot or what but we just didn't have too many "christian" traditions... at least not that I can remember..
Traditions were in phases of my life:
Overseas in Germany (when I was very young):
We walked around the german towns leading up to xmas and I remember smelling Gluwein (like a hot wine I think) and eating like these little sausage things in Nuremburg. Also the germans had these christmas markets where you could get xmas tree decorations etc..
After my father retired from the military:
1. My dads mother came to visit for a month (her husband passed away before I was born)
2. Swedish meatballs and lefsa on Chrismas eve. (Dad's family was from Scandanavia)
3. Depending on how everyone was feeling we'd go to a Christmas Eve service at 11:00 pm
4. Every morning I would take my grandmother a little glass of Sherry and a Swedish cookie.
5. Chrismas morning mom made some sort of nut bread that we had to eat.. smell off coffee was very strong..
As June said, we weren't allowed to decorate the tree until Christmas Eve and I remember when we were young all the kids would fight over who put the first ornament on the tree, not the star atop it. Weird, huh?
Just as a side note, I call it Annual Atheist Gift Exchange Day now!
No, I'm only kidding, I just thought I'd crack a joke... ;D
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When it's all up I'll post pictures...maybe not of me in pj's though.
