Getting the Jump on Christmas 11-11-11

Happy Veteran's Day everyone! And happy 11-11-11. What a cool date!  I'm so thankful for folks like my brother in law who keep our country safe, and my grandfathers who both served.  Wishing all the veterans and their families a blessed day.

I know a lot of people don't like it that the stores seem to be getting ready for Christmas earlier and earlier, but I have to admit I like seeing the decorations and hearing the music.  I do feel for those poor folks who are having to work Thanksgiving Day or at the crack of dawn for those who have to deal Black Friday.

But to focus on the positives, I was at Wal Mart yesterday and got a wild hair and decided to buy a Colorbok ornament kit that the boys could paint.  The kit came with 6 ornaments, one brush, and multiple paint colors.  The kit was $3.

My boys had a blast painting.  I didn't have any newspaper to put down on the table, so I pulled out my wax paper and put that on the table.  In a pinch it makes a great cover.  The second thing I did was I had the boys do some finger painting on some other ornaments I had purchased.  I didn't have any disposable containers to put the paint in. Then I remembered a trick my mom told me.  I got out my plastic wrap and put it inside two small bowls.  The plastic wrap provided a protective coating for the bowl. Then clean up was a snap because I just pulled out the plastic wrap and threw it away.

If you see these little Colorbok kits at Wal Mart, I'd recommend them. The paint went on easily for the boys.  Also, the thing I really liked is that I dropped one of the ornaments on my hard wood floor and it didn't chip or break at all.  For $3 I didn't expect much, but this little kit was great and I would recommend it.

I have decided that for the next few years I want the boys to paint ornaments so that I'll have them when they are older. I'm having them paint enough so that one day when they go out on their own, they'll have some of the ones they painted too. 

I also have another ornament tradition I started when our first son was born that I buy the boys each an ornament every Christmas.  They have evolved as they've gotten older, and I've tried to find things that the boys are into at this stage in their life.  A few years ago I used to read "Where the Wild Things Are" to Sawyer.  So that year he got an ornament that had that.  Two years ago I got Logan an Elvis ornament. I discovered when he was a baby that Elvis would soothe him and stop him from screaming in the car.  It still works to this day. He can be in the middle of a meltdown and "the king" settles him right on down.

Here are pictures of the ornaments that the boys painted.

Hope you are having a great day in your neck of the woods!