New Tradition

This year my daughter wanted our family to do Secret Santas together.  We didn't send each other notes or clues, just a simple gift on Christmas day.  The beauty of this was that it helped us tune into each other by finding or making thoughtful gifts for each other.

My daughter had her younger brother and gave him homemade slime, snowman face gum, "Grinch Pills" and a kitchen timer. A kitchen timer may sound odd, but he's a gadget guy and if you knew him, it would all make sense:). We found the slime, snowman gum idea and Grinch Pills all on Pinterest.

Sources: You can go directly to my Christmas board on Pinterest or directly to the following links.  Slime recipe from Our Best Bites, snowman gum idea was linked to My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia on Pinterest, but I couldn't find it on the blog, but I did find a great blog!  It's ok because the gum project is self-explanatory - just wanted to make sure I gave proper credit.  The Grinch Pills are from Scrapcation Getaway. She did an entire case with a "scut file". I had no idea what a scut file was, so I just saved the pic of the Grinch Pills poem and printed and taped it to the Tic Tacs container.

My youngest had my husband and he gave him the sweetest poster made out of wrapping paper with his hand print and a homemade bracelet.

I was Secret Santa to my oldest and copied off my daughter with the snowman gum and Grinch Pills.  To personalize it, I added a Hex bug and an invention I created especially for him.  My son has a tendency of losing bookmarks, so instead he uses tissues to hold his page.  And if he loses the tissue bookmark, he simply replaces it because there is a tissue box next to his bed for an unending supply of bookmarks:).  So I took a binder clip to be clipped to the back of his book and attached a braided bookmark to the clip to be flipped in and out without being lost because it's attached to the binder clip which is always attached to the back of the book.  Hope it works!

 My oldest had my daughter and gave her some Magic Tree House books to fill in the gap of ones we didn't have and my husband had me and gave me Ellen's new book (I love her!) and some new Chai tea to try because I'm hooked on Chai tea.

It was truly very special and sweet to see the thought and love put into everyone's gifts.   I look forward to continuing this tradition for the years to come.

I also want to share a clever gift bag idea before I sign off.  My daughter's class made gifts for their families and wrapped them in brown paper bag gingerbread houses.  I thought it was such a clever idea! 

The gift inside was super cute too!

Make sure to stop by again tomorrow to see a fun New Year's Eve idea.