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Oh man, this is a good idea! I'm sure our lo's grandparents would love something homemade. I was thinking about doing handprint ornaments this year. While you help them with the hand, you can have the child color it once it's done, maybe? I'm looking forward to hearing other ideas (and ages related!)

We did salt dough ornaments this weekend and let the kids paint them. I put their name and the year on the back and will be sending those out to the grandparents.

We used Christmas cookie cutters

We tried handprint ornaments with LO (both the salt dough kind and a paint print onto a round ornament and neither worked well for us/LO). What we’re doing this year is letting LO paint plain 4x4 ceramic tiles (get them at HD/Lowes) and then I seal them with mod podge and acrylic spray sealer. Glue felt onto the back and you’ve got homemade coasters! The only downside is that those would be heavy to mail (no issue if you use a Priority mailing box), and you need to do several layers of the sealer, which takes time to dry completely and harden.

The dollar stores also have Christmas themed glitter and confetti, and I let LO go to town with that on some green paper trees I cut out for her.

@mrsjazz: I think it was "user error" (haha, my error) on the salt dough. I couldn't get LO's hand imprint deep enough in the dough to look good and then they cracked in half when I baked them. I think we'll try it again this year though, if we have time.

I made coasters last year with pictures of LO - Walgreens prints IG pics (4x4), which fit perfectly onto those tiles), and makes it super easy to make up a bunch reasonably quickly. I'll have to check out those cork tiles though; coasters are a useful enough gift for most anyone.

@blackbird: do you remember which recipe you used and how long you baked them? I've seen so many variations and I bet some work better than others.

@yoursilverlining: We couldn't get the salt dough to work last year either.

@abmamma: She was 9 months last year, so we put her in the high chair with puffs. DH painted her foot and then I pressed her foot onto the canvas board and repeat. We have to make 18! Then DH glued the eyes and nose on and I painted the antlers and glued the ribbon.

We did her foot again last night and did the same thing, high chair while she ate. Only she knew what was going on this year, much harder, but we got them done. Now we just need to get her to glue the pom poms on for ornaments.

@Smurfette: Ahhh---DD is 27 months so this will definitely require some cooperation. She's done handprints pretty well at home so I'm hoping we can make this work. It's cute you did it again this year so you can see how much her feet have grown!

We bought clay ornaments at Michaels (50% off so 75 cents each) and I had her colour on them with crayons. They look super cute and colourful.