Baby’s first Christmas is often filled with such love and wonder. It is the perfect occasion to being building traditions to last a lifetime.

A great way to mark the first Christmas milestone is to begin a tradition of giving the child an ornament each Christmas. The ornaments can be holiday-themed or be given to remind the family of something special about the year.

(My two boys will be getting ornaments from the movie Cars, which was the first movie they ever watched. We saw it on a family vacation and they were obsessed with it for the rest of the year.) When the child grows up and moves out, she will have a set of ornaments from each year of her childhood.

There are a lot of very unique ornaments that can mark the holiday. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Baby Girl Stocking Ornament: This glass ornament is hand painted and then decorated with glitter and ribbons. Bright and festive, it is a great way to celebrate a little one’s first holiday season. Available for baby boy as well. | $24

Holiday Ornaments by Beehive Kitchenware Company: Handmade of lead free pewter, this partridge, tree, and pear would all make beautiful additions to any tree and should stand up well over time. | $16.50 - Sara I.

With Halloween just around the corner, it is time to start thinking about some great photo traditions to start with the kids. I came across some wonderful sites online with tips on making the most of the holiday photo opportunities.

New York Institute of Photography: How to Take Great Halloween Pictures - This site has tons of tips and ideas on how to turn typical Halloween pictures, like the jack-o-lantern on the front porch or trick-or-treaters on their way around the block, into professional-looking photographs.

Digital Photography School: Holiday Photography Tips - Tips that you can use year-round to make your pictures better, applied to the Halloween holiday.

Kodak: Taking Great Halloween Pictures - This article by Kodak offers great photography tips in general as well as some ideas for some really cool Halloween pictures. Up for seeing ghosts, anyone?

A few of my favorite tips from these sites:

• Take pictures in the late afternoon when you can use soft, natural light.


• Try using a tripod and turning off your flash so as not to overexpose the picture.


• To get "night" shots, take the pictures before it is completely dark. When pictures are printed, the bluish purple sky of twilight seems darker.


• Get close. Good, now get closer. Fill your frame with your subject. This helps to unclutter your image and make your photograph really pop.

There are great photo opportunities to be had year after year. Do you have any favorite shots for your family?

Happy Haunting! - Sara I.

Looking for something better than those plastic birthday banners? Look no further - I have your reusable and handmade solution right here. The Polka Dot Tot Spot carries several versions you'll be delighted to pull out year after year.

I love products that reinforce family traditions, and your kids will get extra excited for their special day when they see you hanging the family birthday banner. And you'll be happy knowing that it both looks great and isn't something that will clog up the landfill for hundreds of years. I call that a win-win!

The Polka Dot Tot Spot is also happy to do custom orders for different colors, different words on the banner, and almost anything else you can dream up. Right now if you order a handmade birthday banner ($38) you get one of her adorable birthday shirts for half-off.

She also makes soft fabric balls and blocks, so you can get some serious shopping in while perusing her store. I see the balls and blocks as the perfect emergency gift to have on hand if you anticipate being invited to a lot of First Birthday parties in your future.

- Erika

There is so much going on during the first year with your first baby, it is hard to think about building traditions with your growing family. I don’t think I woke enough to even think about things like that until my twins were almost two!

Luckily, there is a book out there to help even the most bleary-eyed parents come up with ideas of how to begin traditions in their families that will be treasured for a lifetime. The Book of New Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays and Everyday by Meg Cox has been a great resource for our family. Ms. Cox outlines ideas to develop traditions in your family, and not just for the major holidays and celebrations. She also writes about rituals involving daily routines, like dinner and bedtime, and on celebrating milestones from transitioning from bottles to cups all the way through graduations.

Ms. Cox interviewed diverse families from across the country for more than three years in her quest to find rituals and traditions on which to build her own family. This means that all of the ideas in her book have been put into practice by real families, which has given me a little more confidence to try some with ours. One of my favorites? I love the birthday balloon countdown when children pop one balloon on a chain each day until their birthday arrives.

Do you have special traditions already established that your family holds dear? In the continuing quest for more ideas to involve ritual in my children’s lives, I would love to hear what ideas you embrace in your home, too! - Sara I.

When my twins' first birthday rolled around, I struggled to find ways to begin building traditions that could last through the years. I wish I had known Edda Pacifico, a photographer based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the idea she has used for five straight years with her girls!

Every year on their birthday, Edda has taken a picture of her twin daughters all dressed up and having tea at their tea table. Now that they are five, Edda has a fantastic series of pictures that will be precious to her entire family for years to come. (You can find all five on Edda’s blog.)

The photography series is something that any family can embrace in order to celebrate a birthday or any special occasion. It could be a pictures in a favorite location, with a special birthday hat, or even with the family over a cake. The options are endless!

Do you have any photographic traditions that are special in your family? - Sara I.