Our Christmas tree was up early this year.
Like, before Thanksgiving. Being due the week before Christmas really lights a fire under your butt! There won't be any presents under this tree this year since we are doing all our celebrating with family instead of driving back and forth with a newborn but I think my daughter still loves it.
I am not one to do a themed tree or a color specific tree. I am so NOT into those. We had a similar decor growing up and my mom still does it.
Our tree is covered in ornaments from my childhood, my husbands childhood and now some that our daughter had accummulated in her short life. They are all shapes, colors and sizes. I will only ever display a tree with multicolor lights as well. I love the look of Christmas colors :) My mom always hung some kind of tinsel on our tree but for me I have never wanted to do anything but ribbon. Right now it is a gold ribbon covered in multi-colored wrapped Christmas packages. I am hoping to change it up this year but I have to find a new ribbon I like in enough spools to fill my tree. I always had an angel on the top but my husband already had a special star so we stuck with that. Yes, that is a train under our tree and we display our nativity set under the tree too. So far we have had minimal touching from small fingers but we will see how the future goes. My husbands late grandfather made the wooden manger to our set and it is very sentimental to my him and I look forward to telling our children all about how special it is someday ;)
I am surprised at how well this huge tree is covered. I guess my husband and I collected more ornaments than anyone else in our lifetimes. It has our baby's first Christmas ornmanents on it, ones from vacations we took, lots that symbolize my husband's hobbies and favorite sports teams, about a thousand ones I made in Brownies or grade school classes and since we were married right before Christmas I think we have four or five 'Our First Christmas Ornaments' and I can even tell you who gifted them to us as wedding gifts!
I want to display some of the craftier ornaments to our tree as well.
These two are proof that at some point in her life, my mom was crafty. She claims she isn't able to do much but when they were first married my parents tree had mostly ornaments that my mom made herself. This little train and fancy oval are the only ones like this she made. There are several designs she did but only these are each one of a kind and I have them. She said they took so long she wasn't about to make more! I treasure them and always will.
This next one has to go on my tree every year no matter what. I made it in first grade and even if I didn't remember doing that it is dated on the back by my teacher. It's one of those juice can tops to which we attached a picture cut from a Christmas Card. I chose this one because my favorite Christmas carol is (and always will be) 'Away in a Manger'. I can't believe how well the glitter has held up over the last 20 some years. I wonder what kind of glue we used??
These two are by far my favorite. The blue one is from last year; my daughter's first Christmas. I only managed to get two out of her tiny, always moving hands so I have one and my mom has one. This year (the green one) she was much more into it and I got LOTS of handprints. Only three usable one and that is exactly what I wanted. I have one, my mom will get one and my mother in law will get one. I painted her hand and then had to smack it down on the cardstock (she was very willing to do this part!) and then cut it out. They are each mounted on a thin piece of wood and I glued a ribbon hanger to them before attaching a piece of plain cardstock to the back. I added the faces and hats with markers and the scarves and noses with paint. I drew some trees on with a Sharpie for a little extra effect. And, of course they are dated. If you look closely you can see how the one from this year has about eight digits since my daughter moved her hand so much but I only made five of the fingers in to snowmen to get the full effect. Hopefully next year I'll be able to add one for the baby.
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