For those of you with children (or if you are planning on having children or know someone with kids who likes fun ideas), I wanted to share one of my favorite things in my home. For three years (it has actually been four. We accidentally skipped a year), my daughter has made me a self portrait during Christmas under the guidance of her wonderful art teacher Lisa Owen-Lynch. Both of my kids take private art lessons from her. She is so talented and patient. We are very lucky to have her in our lives. My son takes an hour lesson every other week. And my daughter, once a week (my daughter did my gnome on this blog).

I think it is such a fantastic skill to encourage. I love art. And I love looking around my home and admiring the works my children have done. On to their self portraits:

This was my daughter (age 11), year one.

This was my daughter (age 12), year two.

This was this year’s self portrait at age fourteen. Notice the Anthropologie fox shirt she is sporting. : )

I always get the paintings framed in spectacular large gold or silver frames, because I think the chunkiness of the frame makes the pieces feel all the more special. By the time both of my kids leave for college, I hope to have six-seven self portraits of each child in in my home. I cannot wait to see how they change.

My son started his first self portrait this year with one that he painted for me for Christmas. I plan on making a wall feature with just their self portraits on it when I have enough to cluster them.

I don’t post pictures of my children on this blog. I guess this will be the closest I come to it. I wanted to share what I think is such a neat project. And a really cool decoration for the home. If you have an art teacher near you, I highly recommend hiring them and having your child/children make you one (if not many over the years) of these self portraits. It is so interesting to see how your child views themselves and to log the ways they change over the years.

This Christmas, my kids also made one each for my mother. She loved them.

Have you done this? Do you have any other ideas for me on how to create lasting physical mementos of my children? I love a project!

P.S. I shared this on Savvy Southern Style.

And My Romantic Home.