We didn’t do a photo holiday card this year because frankly, masochism just isn’t my thing. What we did instead was make cards from a picture of this painting I helped the kids make. I didn’t send it to everyone on my card list, just to grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the like, so I thought it’d be nice to share it here, where a larger audience could admire their handiwork (see what I did there?).

I got the idea here, via Pinterest, and I was completely charmed by it. Oddly, I had a spare canvas lying around, so I bought some paint and we got to work. The top three handprints are Brynja’s (even though her name was left out on the actual card, she did have a hand in it — yeah, I can’t help myself), the middle three are Petra’s, and the bottom four are Tage’s. The red “bulbs” are Yrsa’s and Lydia’s thumbprints, and I did the star and the trunk with a paintbrush. The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes, and I love the way it looks hanging above the TV in our upstairs living room.