Christmas Cheer

For us, the day after Thanksgiving is the day we welcome Christmas...and we do it in style. We turn on some Christmas music, pull out the decorations, make some hot chocolate and start the madness. As the kids get older, my job gets easier and easier! They organized the tree limbs into sizes and got the tree together in about 20 minutes. We added lights, ornaments, ribbon and garland and viola...the tree is done. We hung wreaths, greenery, stockings and even added snow to our bookshelves. The kids love finding their stockings and getting them in just the right order every year. We hung our family photo ornaments on garland in the living room and put their hand made ornaments on their own little trees in their rooms. Eli and Autumn are sharing a tree while Lucas and Noah each have their own. They spent a lot of time decorating their trees just right and getting their rooms ready for the holiday. We had a great time decorating, singing and drinking hot chocolate and I love it that it is one of our family traditions that the kids look forward to every year. (I'll be sure to post their final tree pics later.)

One of our holiday traditions incorporates art, creativity and thriftiness...last year we made Christmas trees out of hangers so this year I decided to keep the tree theme going and make some more. I made 3 new mini trees; one is covered in white feathers and the other two are white with sparkles. I glued a layer of white glitter onto the cardboard tube, spray painted a layer of white, followed by more glitter, more spray paint, more glitter and so on until I had a fuzzy, white, sparkly Christmas tree. (I'll post those pics later.)

Our other decoration project this year, was to make our own tree ornaments. We had 18 Styrofoam balls that we covered with beaded pins and sequins. This turned out to be quite the labor of love! We all sat around the dining room table pushing in hundreds of little pins, trying to design the best ornament. I am very proud that all of the kids finished what they started and made it a fun family event. Noah, once again, surprised me by making several ornaments. The last time he helped me with a time consuming project, he worked for hours sewing hearts on to our family tree for Valentine's day. He seems to like challenging projects that require an extreme amount of focus. He really gets into the details and does a great job. We made a ton of ornaments and made a great table centerpiece with them. And of course, I'll post those final pics later too. :)

We are officially ready for Christmas and whatever surprises may be in store. Personally, I'm hoping that Santa brings me a job.......