Sharing Your Holiday Family Traditions- What do you do?

I've been thinking a lot this week about our family traditions for the holidays, which ones we have and where we got those traditions. For instance, at Thanksgiving we always have a sweet potato dish that came from one of our friends from school and a cranberry grape salad that was my husband's mom's recipe. We go around the table after eating and say one thing we are each truely Thankful for from the past year.

On Christmas Eve we come home from church, everyone opens one package, it's never a surprise. It's always new pajamas for everyone. We put on our new pajamas, eat fondue in the family room in front of the fire, while we open presents in our jammies. The fondue tradition came from my family and the new Pajamas to open and wear on Christmas Eve came from my best friend's family. The tradition of Cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning came from his family, my family always had oyster stew for Christmas breakfast- Great for night but not for breakfast, I was glad to give that one up.

Here's my question: What are some of your family traditions for the holidays? Where did those traditions come from? Are there any traditions you'd give up or change if you could? Which ones are your favorites.  Write a post about your traditions and then link on up so that we can all read about them. Who knows, maybe we'll all gain a new tradition for this upcoming holiday season.

Kids poking, prodding, snooping and shaking their gifts under the tree?

I got so tired of my kids all pulling their presents out from under the tree and trying to figure out what was in each one that I decided a few years ago to stump them by not using gift tags to clue them into which packages were theirs. I now use a different wrapping paper for each of my kids.
Without names on the packages, the kids don't know which ones are theirs and they don't snoop as much. I think it is because their name is not right there teasing and tempting them.

Big Hint Here-Make sure to to write down which paper is for which kid. One year I had a total brain freeze and forgot which wrapping paper was for which kid. After shaking, poking and prodding, which really was what I was trying to avoid in the first place, I ended up having to unwrap one gift from each paper to figure out who got which gifts. To remind myself of who gets what, I tape a small piece of their assigned wrapping paper next to their name on a piece of notebook paper. Now if I can just remember where I put that piece of paper.....
Try it and see if it works for you!

Is your wrapping paper a bit too small for your package? Try this green tip!

Has this ever happened to you?

Have you ever cut a piece of paper or had a bit left from another package and it is just a little too small? Well here is a handy hint I learned from my daughter Laura.

This method is especially useful for packages that are just a bit too large for a full size roll of paper. Instead of having to patch 2 pieces of paper together to fit around the package, try this method to save yourself some time, tape and paper.

You are going to fold in the corners of the paper instead of the edges so take the item you want to wrap and rotate it on the paper like this.

Next fold 2 opposite corners into the middle

Now fold in the top corner tucking the sides in neatly. Place a piece of tape on each side to hold.

Tuck in the sides.

Then fold the last corner up and over and tape to seal the package.

You just used the piece of paper that was too small to wrap the traditional way
to wrap your package.