One of the interesting things about growing up and becoming an adult is that you get to create your own holiday traditions.   Over the past 15 years my husband and I have created traditions for our own family and here are some of our favorites.

A week before Christmas I break out my Pottery Barn Christmas Reindeer dishes and we use these everyday through Christmas.  I just love these dishes; they are very pretty, but whimsical and fun too.  I got them the first year that they came out and have added to them over the years.  This year I got a new plastic set for my daughter and drinking glasses.   Every year we all scramble to get our favorite reindeer dish; I try to get Vixen and my son claims Donner or Dasher.

Another favorite tradition is that each family member gets their own ornament every year.  Sometimes we just pick out something we like, but most years we try to get something that is representative of that year.   For instance, over the years my son has gotten the following ornaments: a baseball (when he was on the T-ball league), a soccer ball (when he played soccer), a violin, a hot wheels car and Spongebob (his favorite show that year).   This year his ornament is an acoustic guitar because he learned to play this summer.  My daughter’s ornament is a violin because she just started taking lessons this year; I found her ornament at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Store.  Both kids are also sharing an ornament of a black hi-top Converse shoe because they both love Converse.  We found the Converse shoe at Urban Outfitters. This is my ornament because I took riding lessons this past fall; I found it (along with the guitar) on Amazon.

Sometimes in addition to our individual ornaments we also buy a family ornament to represent something the whole family shared; we have a beautiful Mouse Ears ornament from our first trip to Disney World and my son and I share a “Tower of Terror” ornament to celebrate (?) our terrifying ride together.  We always try to buy an ornament from our destination when we go on vacation.   Each year we have fun decorating the tree; as we unpack “our” ornaments we talk about them.  One year way into the future I will decorate the tree with my grandkids and tell them a story about each ornament.  However, my memory is already very bad so this year I also bought a beautiful notebook to write down all the ornaments along with the year and the owner. 

Our last tradition is fun, yet also practical; we buy new pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve.  This tradition was born out of my vanity–I wanted everyone to look good for photos on Christmas morning.  Here’s a photo of my daughter in 2006 dressed in the same pajamas as her My Twinn Doll:

And here’s the whole family last Christmas, 2007:

Sometimes it can be very hard to find cute pajamas.  This year I went to Nordstrom (my pajamas), Bloomingdale’s (my husband and daughter) and Gapkids (my son).  

Here are my husband’s:

My son’s:

And my pajamas:

I really like my pajamas; they are well made, comfy and very cute.  They are made by PJ Salvage and I will buy more pajamas by this brand in the future.  

This is my favorite time of the year and I really try to make Christmas special for my family and build memories; I think creating traditions is a big part of that.  Now that I have shared some of my family’s Christmas traditions, please share; what are your Christmas traditions?