I love Christmas - everything about it. I especially love decorating. However, I have to confess that the past seven years have been a little depressing because our decorations have been in storage. Every year I miss them. My kids have never seen them. We have a few things and it's cheery, but I miss everything else.
In storage, we have a huge tree skirt with penguins on it that my sister-in-law made me several years ago. Since we don't have that, we've been using a red bath towel. I finally decided this year to buy one. I was shocked to see how expensive they are, so I was very excited to find a $50 skirt on clearance for $13. It is beautiful and really well made. Best of all, it has a Texas theme.
With everything else in storage are all our tree decorations. I've never been a fan of the glass balls and our decorations are mostly made of wood. We also have ornaments from our various travels around the globe. They're pretty cool. Without them, our tree was looking pretty sparse.
Last year I made some ornaments out of lemons that I really liked, but David didn't. This year I decided to make some different kinds. Our first ornaments were made from candy canes melted in cookie cutters.
I actually had a hard time finding metal cookie cutters. I had to go to three different stores to find a good variety. Baylie doesn't like peppermint, so we did some peppermint and some fruit flavored.
The ornaments were supposed to be made with round peppermint candies, but I couldn't find any. I thought the candy canes made really pretty patterns. I learned the hard way that it's best to just use large, simple cookie cutters. The other ones broke when I tried to pop them out of the cookie cutters.
The ones that didn't break were really pretty.
The kids strung popcorn. It was messy, but fun, and added a lot of spice to our tree.
I strung cranberries and my fingertips are still sore from the needle. It looks pretty though.
We next made ornaments by blowing up balloons, wrapping them in twine and painting the twine with glitter glue. Once the glue was dry, we popped the balloons and were just left with the twine balls.
Next we're going to make some ornaments out of applesauce and cinnamon. I'm excited to try those. Our tree is looking much more full and cheery. I even broke down and bought some small glass balls.
Every year David and the kids make a gingerbread house. This year we chose the village so they could each make their own little house.
I'm trying to hold them off from eating them (gross) until a little closer to Christmas.
Every year I tell myself that I'll make the gingerbread, but I always end up buying one of those awful pre-made ones. The houses turned out cute - as always.
I love creating memories with my kids. We're having a great December.
No comments:
Post a Comment