Traditions- Santa Sacks

On snowy days like today I love to pull out projects. You know the ones...you have good intentions, buy all the materials and then life gets crazy. Thus, the Santa Sacks. Now you may be asking yourself, what is this you speak of? Well, there is a story... my mother-in-law started this tradition at their house where they have these flannel pillowcase looking stockings they use at Christmas. Mom & Dad's are made out of their own colors and then for all of the kids they have one main fabric with a small piece of all of their siblings "main fabric" on theirs also. So you have a small piece of everyone's fabric on your Santa Sack. So cool. 

When I'd been dating Matthew for awhile we were shopping at JoAnn's and I asked his mom if we could make me a Santa Sack (so I didn't have to use "the basket" anymore). :) She kindly told me, they are only for family members. Fair enough. 

So that brings us to a freezing cold night last winter. Matthew and I had gone to sushi (our absolute favorite) and he wanted to go on a walk. He took me to the huge Christmas tree on the grove and there it was... his mom had made me my own Santa Sack...and a bright shiny engagement ring was inside of it. So now you can understand why this Santa Sack tradition has a soft spot in my heart.

Love the details on the front of it

I get to see my Santa Sack every Christmas! :)

Since this is such a great tradition I wanted to carry it on with our own family. So I cut out some coupons from the paper (love coupons), and carefully chose the fabrics for our Santa Sacks. I made sure to buy extra so that when we have kids someday I will have leftover pieces to sew patches on theirs. 

So here is how they turned out. They have drawstrings at the top and are super soft flannel. 

Too bad I didn't finish these for our first Christmas...but Christmas #2 they will be proudly hanging somewhere in our house :) I can't wait to add more things to them!

So I encourage you to have some traditions in your family. They create special memories and it's fun to capture photos of you doing them every year!