Our Family Christmas Stockings

So I guess if you own a sewing and embroidery business it is a given that you should have your own stockings monogrammed, correct? I’m going to let you in on a little secret…
Are you listening?

I don’t have monograms on our stockings. And I don’t know that I ever will.

There, I said it! Whew. Now that that is out of the way…

Every year that I share pictures of our Christmas decorations, some friend will WITHOUT fail comment about the fact that I do not have names on my stockings. It’s just weird right? I monogram other people’s stockings for a living. I LOVE how each and every one of their’s turns out. So why don’t I do my own?
I have commitment issues when it comes to stockings. If we get right down to it. I. Can’t. Commit.

When we were expecting Taylor and setting up our first Christmas together as a family, (2007), John mentioned that he literally had the same stocking at his parents, from birth until now. That is COMMITMENT. He loved the idea of us having the same stockings through the years, and I loved the sentimental feeling of it too. I agreed to purchase some red and white felt stockings. I wrote our 3 names on them, and hung them up proudly that year.

Two years later (2009) we were expecting Wyatt. I thought to myself, I need to go buy a fourth stocking for Wyatt! I went to the store to purchase a stocking and while it was the same red and white felt, the ribbon design on it was DIFFERENT. I could not deal with the thought of one stocking being different than the other three, but felt torn about being sentimental. My OCD ultimately won out. I told myself THIS would be the year that we all have our sentimental family stockings. I purchased 4 new ones, plus 4 extras. You know, in case we had a lot more kids down the road. I think I scared John when I came home with 8 stockings. I just told him I didn’t want to run into the same problem later, so I had it taken care of.

4 years passed, it was 2013 and I had started the boutique, and was sewing everything I could. I got the crazy urge to sew a ruffle tree skirt for our Christmas tree, and what would a beautiful tree skirt be without matching stockings??? Yes. You guessed it. I changed our stockings again. I hand sewed 4 burlap stockings, hand cut out and stitched our names on them (this was pre-embroidery machine). I was absolutely in love with the theme.

I kept that theme for 2 years. Then…. we decided to have a third baby. The year I was expecting Cheyenne I pulled out our Christmas stockings and the thought of hand sewing another stocking was not feeling great. The motivation and excitement had passed, and I had a new idea in my head for stockings. I loved the idea of everyone having a similar THEME stocking, but all of them being their own personal design. I searched and searched and searched. Finally, I fell in love with a set from Pottery Barn Kids. They are perfect, and I think they have officially been our longest running set of stockings in the 12 years that we’ve shared Christmas’s together. I was tempted to buy one extra stocking “just in case” we decided to have a fourth baby, but I decided to LEAVE it alone, and cross that bridge later.

SO, all that to say. While I’m about 98% confident that we will keep THIS current set of stockings for the rest of our lives, there is that small 2% of me, that knows I’m a female who likes to change her mind, so I hold out the fact that I don’t want to personalize something I may not keep forever…

Lately, I have seen the idea of hanging little initials, or tags with names on them, and I kind of like that semi-permanent option. 😀 If you are in the market for new stockings, I have the ones that I purchased linked here. They are SO pretty and well worth the money. The quality is great, and I have no doubt they will last us forever.