our favorite holiday traditions!
- Our Grand Lives
- Dec 5, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 18, 2025
Friday, December 5, 2025
HAPPY FRIDAY, FRIENDS!
The holiday season has officially hit its stride…
Lights twinkling everywhere, calendars filling up,
and that familiar mix of excitement and cozy chaos in the air.
As we head into the weekend, there’s a sense of momentum:
maybe a little more baking, a little more shopping, a few festive gatherings,
or simply savoring quiet moments with a warm drink.
Many of us will be enjoying some of the holiday traditions we’ve grown to love!
Perhaps it’s chopping down your own Christmas tree
OR
watching a favorite holiday movie
OR
building gingerbread houses
OR
volunteering as a family!
The holiday season always brings us back
to the traditions that make this time of year feel truly magical
and we’re so grateful for them
Today, we’re excited to share 3 of our favorite holiday traditions with you all!
In 2023, Laurie first introduced us to this favorite tradition in our post,
Then, last year, she shared highlights from
If you’d like to read more about the history of this family tradition
feel free to tap on the links above.
Today, Laurie has an update to share!
Look at those babies!
To sum things up, our Christmas Craft Day first began
with some good family friends 29 years ago
when our own kids were between the ages of one and four.
Each year, we ate breakfast together and then spent the day creating ornaments
for our Christmas trees.
As our kids grew, so did the difficulty of the crafts!
Simple painting projects
transformed into more elaborate prep and crafting!
Our kids are all married now,
and between our two families we have a new generation of Littles
who have joined in this annual tradition!
Christmas Craft Day 2025
We love our traditional Christmas Craft Day and our 29th annual celebration didn’t disappoint, although we were missing two of our Middles who weren’t able to make it home from Colorado this year!
Our day was full of food, drinks, crafts, setting up the tree, football, laughter and lots of reminiscing.
I always have fun planning this yearly event which typically takes place during Thanksgiving weekend!
Our “schedule of events” for the day has gradually changed over the years! Our Middles love that our day gives them time to catch up with each other. In fact, they’ve taken over the craft planning part of our day, too, which works out nicely for us GRANDS! We can spend our time chatting and playing and snuggling with Littles… perfect!
As the needs of our Littles have changed, we’ve learned to be flexible! This year our four Littles were very busy exploring their surroundings and playing with each other this year, so crafts took a back seat and were done in spurts, starting them and then finishing later!
We had an example of the planned preschool craft ready to go!
A Christmas tree made with pipe cleaners
attached to a cardboard base
and decorated with beads as Christmas lights
and a shining star on top!.
Little D’s version!
Who doesn’t want to use every single bead available on their tree?!?
The best part of the day…
Watching our Littles discover new friendships with each other!
♥️ The third generation of Christmas Crafters! ♥️
It’s a favorite holiday tradition!
In 2021, one of Laura’s neighbors spearheaded this wonderful idea…
a new tradition that connects our neighborhood every December!
Five years ago, in late November 2021,
this package appeared at our front door!
I am a sucker for anything cute and, boy oh boy, was this package cute!
So much thought went into it with such sweet details!
Look at that darling red pick-up truck ornament!
Each November, since 2021, our neighbor sends out 36 invites,
one to each household on our street!
We are all invited to participate in a Holiday Card Exchange!
I’m not sure what the invite looked like in 2022,
But here’s the invite and cover letter we received in 2023.
As you may be able to tell, each household can choose to participate or not. If so, we bring 36 greeting cards, photo cards or treat bags by a certain date to the home of the couple who organized this. The couple then gives themselves the task of sorting the cards into piles, one for each home on the street. When they’ve finished that task, the couple hand delivers the cards! I'd say that most years about 30 families participate!
Here’s the other creative “invites” we’ve received -
last year (2024) and this year (2025)!
Every year the invitation seems to outdo the previous years!
This year the invite contained a pouch of simmer pot ingredients!
It looks (and smells) lovely!
We’re waiting for the perfect occasion to use it!
Of course, my husband and I choose to participate each year!
It’s such a lovely way to connect with neighbors we know
and those we don’t know well!
And we love getting the cards, photos and treats that come our way, too!
I don’t remember what we sent every year…
The first year I believe it was a simple card with a chocolate or two.
Since then, we’ve been a bit more creative…
One year we made white chocolate puff corn and bagged it up!
In 2023 we wrapped a wooden snowflake ornament with silver and gold chocolates!
We’ve still got a week to decide about this year’s gift…
Hmmm! I’ve got time to figure it out, right? 😳
♥️ Connecting with neighbors! ♥️
It’s a favorite holiday tradition!
This final holiday tradition is only two years old,
but for Laura it has quickly become a fave,
one that will continue, hopefully, for many years to come!
When our daughters were growing up, we had another tradition, where we purchased a new children’s Christmas book each year. (I know, I know! What can I say? It's the kindergarten teacher in me!) The girls would open the book on Christmas Eve and then, of course, we'd have to read it that night! I was always on the hunt for the perfect book to add to our collection.
These days our girls are grown and the bin of books sits next to the fireplace and doesn’t get touched much. I remembered that Laurie had shared a fun way to share books with Littles in one of our earliest posts. And then, a few years ago, I was catching up on blogs I read and Niky from The House on Silverado shared this sweet version of an advent calendar she made for her young granddaughter (she even made a special box to house all the books)!
THAT GAVE ME AN IDEA!
Last year, I gathered all of our Christmas books,
sorted them by type
(nativity stories, board books, Santa stories, search and find, and more)
and put them in order, 1-24, varying the books as I went.
A few of our many Christmas books!
Then I wrapped all of the books (it was a great way to use up some of the extra rolls of Christmas wrap I’ve gathered over the years). I labeled each book with a number (1-24) and put them all in a basket that traveled with us when we went to Wisconsin for our Thanksgiving visit!
Before we headed home, I gave the basket of books to Little L and Little P and explained that they’d open one every day, beginning on December 1 and continuing until December 24, Christmas Eve. I had plans to give them a special final book on December 25 to add to their own collection and I sent that one to them separately!
MY LITTLES LOVED THIS TRADITION LAST YEAR!
As a distant GRAND, I can check in with them regularly via FaceTime
to see which book they’ve unwrapped.
Sometimes Little L will show me her favorite page
or I’ll tell her a memory I have of her mama and the book!
Screenshot taken this year!
Little P (at eighteen months old) is still pretty young,
but she loves to unwrap the books and show them to me, too!
This is just the sweetest way for us to connect during the advent season
and it’s a great way for those books to be enjoyed over and over again!
In case you are wondering…
After the holidays were over last year,
Daughter J collected all the books and brought them back to me
when she came for a visit
SO
I could store them and repeat it all over again this year!
I’m happy to report, that Little L and Little P
are just as excited for our Christmas Book Countdown this year!
♥️ Making memories with our Littles! ♥️
It’s a favorite holiday tradition!
The traditions that we create with loved ones are precious,
so it's important that we hang on to them!
After all, it’s those traditions that lead us to
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY TRADITIONS?
We’d love to learn more!
If you’d like, PLEASE share in the comments section at the end of this post!
We appreciate your comments so much!
As December and the holiday season continues,
We’d love to have you stop by!
We’ll be back NEXT WEEK with more holiday fun to share!
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Thanks so much for joining us today!
There is so much to celebrate as the holiday season hits its full stride! We all have our own holiday traditions—little rituals, big celebrations, and everything in between—that make the season uniquely ours. Whether they’re passed down through generations or invented on the fly, these traditions reflect who we are and what we cherish most. Here’s to soaking up every bit of joy, connection, and comfort this special time of year brings.
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING SITES FOR FEATURING OUR POST!
Sundays on Silverado from The House on Silverado
Crazy Little Lovebirds from Crazy Little Lovebirds
A Morning Cup of Joe from The Cottage Market
Tuesday Turn About from My Wee Abode
Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop from Penny's Passion
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I LOVE the Christmas Craft Day idea! And the books, too. These are wonderful ideas, as always. Thank you for sharing this post with us at the Will Blog for Comments #74 linkup. We're on Holiday Hiatus until January 5 when linkup #75 will open (a little earlier than usual), so we hope to see you then.
What lovely traditions you both have. Love the neighbour scheme and the family crafts. After our daughter died last year, our son in Northern Ireland brought the family over for a surprise visit for a weekend before Christmas and our other son came up with his family for the night. They both have another child this year and the family came over from Northern Ieland again but we didn't have room for the other family to stay and they cancelled their evening visit the day before as a 2 hour round trip was too much for them and I'm still very disappointed. We exchange Christmas cards with our immediate and surrounding neighbours that we chat to during the year. There…
Lovely traditions - the card exchange must be a nice way to get to know the neighbors better...
https://jeanneselep.blogspot.com/2025/12/collage-christmas-hutch.html
So many sweet traditions. I loved reading about them all, especially the book advent calendar! What a beautiful way to connect with grands who live further away! I like the idea of reusing the same books each year, too!
Sharing on Sundays on Silverado tomorrow! Happy holidays!
OMG, such wonderful traditions. My daughter has 24 books that are rewrapped each year and read one a night until Dec 24th. And it is just as much fun each year as it was the year before! Visiting from #MMBC