When Lily had her first Christmas, I knew I wanted to start a tradition – something that we did every year and that we could keep as she grew. Looking around at Pinterest became overwhelming, because there are a lot of intensive crafts that, even though they’re super cute, I don’t realistically see myself doing every year. I kept looking for something achievable with multiple children and settled on handprint ornaments. I know salt dough is easy, but even that seemed intensive at the time and hard to keep over multiple years, so I settled on plain old paint-on-paper handprints. This year is the first year I had to do both children, but my best friend came over and helped me. Lily got to paint with her paintbrush and in between, we snagged her hand, swiftly painted it and placed it on the paper and got a winner (and about 8 not-so-perfect ones too). James was very cooperative and it only took two tries, but he’s only 5 months so he was fascinated to mostly watch.
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This is how the handprints came out. Certainly not perfect, but I’m really happy with how they came out. You can definitely tell how big their hands are, all the fingers are there, and it’s on the paper (not just the floor or table). Next will be cutting it out, labeling with name and year, and sending it to Daddy’s office to get laminated. Amazon also sells laminators.
This is what the final product looks like. Not very fancy, definitely not like Pinterest, but doable and something that can be hung on the tree every year. These are from Lily’s first and second Christmas, with the blue ones above to be added this year. I still have to hole-punch these and string ribbon through them, but I may as well wait for the new ones to be laminated and do it all at once (when one’s baby insists on being held at all times, there’s only so much one can do right?).
