Landon's First Christmas Ornament

One of our family traditions that we started when Hudson was born was that we would select and purchase an ornament for the family Christmas tree each year for each of our children. The concept is that we would then give all of the ornaments to them when they are grown so that they can use the same ornaments to adorn their own family trees if they chose to do so. Well, of course when Hudson was born we had to get a Baby's First Christmas Ornament and actually selected one that I didn't really love and wasn't quite as special as I wanted his ornament to be because I had initially wanted a personalized ornament with his name and was never able to find one I loved so I settled on something else instead. Well, once we added his newborn photos to the ornament which was a two-sided frame I completely fell in love with it just because it held a piece of all of us and seem to easily and remarkably represent us in our first year as a family of three. One side has a precious photo of Hudson by himself in the buff and the other, a lovely photo of David and I cradling him in his first few weeks of life. Both images are amazingly beautiful and completely make his ornament beyond special to me and now that he is older, he often looks at it and giggles and smiles about the fact that it is him "Baby Hudson" as he says, in the photos.

So, of course we had to get little Landon a Baby's First Christmas ornament as well and since I once again had THE most difficult time finding anything that I liked and would meet my expectations, I turned to Etsy and found the perfect ornament for our little guy. This actually wasn't my first choice initially as I had my eye on a couple of other special custom made ornaments as well, but in the end, I decided that the other couple of choices just wouldn't work and seemed too feminine for our little boy. Instead I, or rather David and I, decided that this ornament was THE ornament that suited our little boy best and I ordered it shortly after Landon was born. (I had waited forever to order an ornament because I wanted to wait until he was born and to be certain that we didn't decide on another name or something, ha!) I was almost afraid that it wouldn't get here in time for Christmas at all, but low and behold, it was delivered in plenty of time before the big day and I hurriedly hung it on the tree when it arrived. The ornament itself consists of a round silver disk adorned with a copper Christmas tree accent ornament and underneath displays his name and the first Christmas date hand stamped on one side on the disk. Here are a couple of shots of it hanging when I was first trying to figure out the perfect home for it on our tree. It looks a bit different in person since the flash makes it looks shinier and shows more of the natural scratches that exist on the metal surface itself, but in person it looks more matte and smooth without the flash hitting it. I just love it and look forward to not only hanging it on our tree for many, many years to come, but also adding to it with many other ornaments along the way! It is definitely a very special ornament to start the ornament collection for our very special little boy!