I found myself asking the question when my daughter was little under two, "What else can I get for my husband for Christmas?" We'd just added my son to the family a few months before and to say that we were tight on money would have been a gross understatement. I really wanted to give him something special from Armina, since she was old enough that I felt like she would want to give dad something for Christmas.
As I was going through my art supplies one day, looking for stuff to make a few Christmas ornaments, I suddenly had an idea. Why not let Armina just paint dad a picture? Yes, I could have given my daughter crayons and let her draw him a picture, but my daughter was still at the stage where if you gave her a crayon she'd draw with it for three seconds and then try and eat it. So, I went to the store that day, got some finger paints that were on sale and grabbed my canvas pad that I had from painting pictures throughout the years (you could do this just as easy with just a big piece of paper and whatever art supplies you have lying around) and sat down with my daughter. And she painted her first finger paint picture shown above. I took her paint covered hands and added hand prints to the picture just because I thought it would be a cool touch and then added a Christmas message to dad "from Armina" and in the upper corner put her age and the year so we'd know years from now when she painted the picture.
After it was dry I re-purposed one of the many poster frames I have lying around from painting pictures in high school and college (I just pulled out my painting and stuck it into storage to grab the frame), but you could easily pick up a poster frame for under 10.00 if you wanted to do this or just grab whatever frame you have around the house, even, and just cut out pieces of the painting to make a collage painting or whatever your imagination can come up with :).
My husband opened that gift Christmas morning and was blown away. He still says to this day it was one of the best gifts he's ever received. We hung the painting up in our living room and everyone that sees it says that it is the most awesome idea for wall art they'd ever seen.
I did the exact same thing with both kids just this last week and am giving my husband two more paintings for us to hang up on the walls that our children created (with hand prints included because mom thinks it's awesome to do that ;). How can you beat a little bit of your child for Christmas? I know I sure can't think of anything. Enjoy all!
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