Painting Christmas Ornaments

We continue a really neat tradition that my husband's family had growing up. Each year the children are given one special ornament that represents something new/fun/memorable from that year.

It really is a fun tradition.

But did I mention it's challenging, too?

There are easy years to find ornaments for: "learned to walk", "started school", "Baby's 1st Christmas"...etc.

But sometimes it can get a little tricky.

Last year we took a slight detour from the usual-- super significant ornaments and decided to let the kids pick out their own $1 ornaments from JoAnns that they could paint.

But sticking with tradition I rationalized it by explaining to my husband that they learned to develop their art talents this past year.

The kids, of course needed no convincing.  Any opportunity to paint is very grand indeed.

Here's our results.

But because I wanted these to be special ornaments that we would hang on the tree year after year I did supervise them a bit.

I explained to them the importance of making them look nice by not adding too many colors.  I told them to start with a plan first, and then paint.  They both did a fantastic job. My husband said his gift was letting me paint his.  I also painted the 1 year old's.

The last thing I did once everything was dried was to outline everything in Sharpie, that really made their art pop-- oh and of course I had to seal 'em up with some Mod Podge.