It's All About The Kids!

I love making Christmas ornaments featuring my kids in some way....a hand print, a picture, their artwork.......they themselves give off so much joy and excitement during this time of year and, for me, doing this is a way to hold onto that preciousness. I've made ornaments my sister-in-law and given them to her as a gift for the past several years and she loves it!

There were lots of great ideas this year that I came across on One Pretty Thing ~ one of my favorite sites ~ so finding inspiration was easy.

As is usual for me, I started out with one idea and ended up changing it about 5 times! I knew that I wanted to use pictures of the boys which I Christmased-up over at Picnik (love!), printed out onto iron-on transfer paper and then affixed to some unbleached muslin. I'd actually knitted three squares in different colors intending to stitch the pictures onto them and then make little ornaments from those, but after I did one I changed my mind; it's cute and I kept it but wasn't in love with it, you know. Since there wasn't going to be the originally intended commonality amongst them now, I ended up making them all different.

Daniel's (original idea)...


Evan's...


Jack's...


Jack's is probably my favorite. I stitched his photo and different kinds of ribbon to two layers of quilt batting (Warm & Natural, my favorite). I got the idea from this post by Annalea Hart (i know, i know....someone with my same first name who also happens to craft!!!) over at Our Hartbeat who made these wonderful pillows...


I ended up doing something similar with Jack's ornament - super cute!


Love the ribbon (I definitely want to incorporate this again into some future craft project) and I know my s-i-l will love adding all three Christmas ornaments to her growing collection!


Happy Christmas!!!