New Year - Wishing Jars

Looking for an easy craft and a cute New Year tradition to do with your kids and or loved ones? Make a wishing jar that details your wishes and hopes for the New Year. Open it up at the end of the year for some memories. You can also add one note per month detailing your happiest memory for that month. At the end of the year, you will have a jar full of happy memories.

This quick craft was fairly inexpensive and my kids loved it. I cannot wait to open to jar at the end of the year and see if some of their wishes come true. What did you wish for in the New Year?

I can't take credit for this amazing idea, rather I stole it from a great neighbor and dear friend who started this tradition with her family after a hard personal year. After learning how fun it was to relive their wishes from the previous year and how much joy it brought them, I decided we needed to get on this trend too. She even supplied us with some of her fancy paper to write wishes on to get us started. Let's craft some wishing jars.

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Pick out your wishing jar

I actually had a couple of extra mason jars on hand, so I used them to keep costs down since they were just taking up space in my cabinets. They did have the Ball logo on the jar, so a fully smooth jar would have been better, but once it was decorated you could not tell but did make some sticker placement challenging. If you do not have any on hand, I have linked a couple of options below. Hobby Lobby or Dollar Tree also always have some sort of clear jar in the store. My advice here would be to keep in mind two things. Make sure the mouth is wide enough if you want battery-powered LED lights in the jar. The second would be if the jar needs a lid. My kids chose to put glitter in their jars so a lid was a must-have.

16 Oz Mason Jar 6 Pack with LED lights

Pick out your Swag - Decorative Paper, Stickers, Lights, Glitter, Jewels, etc

My friend had given me some paper to get started, but we headed to Hobby Lobby to grab a couple more things. I brought my kids along for this part so that they could pick out the stickers and glitter that they wanted. Depending on the age, you could really go all out here. Part of me wanted to take on the task of bejewelling the entire jar, but the other part of me knew that half of them would end up on the ground and would be tiny choking hazards for my 1-year-old. We found some heart stickers that were close enough. My son chose some shark stickers and my daughter some My Little Pony stickers. They then picked a couple of other decorative sticker packs and we were on our way. Do not forget to pick up some sparkly card stock or something sturdy and pretty to write your wishes on.

You can also pick some up from Amazon. Sparkly Card Stock

I could not locate LED lights in Hobby Lobby so I ended up grabbing the below from Amazon. Note of caution they did not come with batteries, you will need 6 double A's for two strings. The pack was larger than I expected and might not work with a narrow-mouth jar.

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Now for the Fun Part!

I laid a contractor bag down on our kitchen table so that I did not have to deal with cleaning up the glitter and the kids got started. They cut extra strips of fancy paper to make their wishes on. While they were doing that, I got the batteries in the light packs and put them in their jars. The kids then decorated their jars with the stickers and items they picked out. After their jars met their beauty standards, we talked about what we wished for this year. There were some heavy monetary requests mom has not quite figured out how to work through (20 days in Florida, Disney World, Monster Jam), but also sweet requests like a loving family, happy friends, and a baby sister (don't tell Dad). We then poured our "fairy dust", aka glitter on our wishes and sealed them up until December.

Set time each month to add memories

For ease of remembering we decided that on the last Friday of every month, we will add our favorite memory to their jar. We put a reminder on the calendar so we would not forget. I cannot wait to see what the end of the year brings and relive all my kid's wishes with them as well as their top moments of the New Year. They make excellent little night lights as well. The LED lights I bought from Amazon came with a remote, 8 different light settings, a timer, and a dimmer.

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