Our tree

I am really trying to stay true to my belief of natural decorating and living rurally like we do now, is helping me out in that mission.  I have woods on 3 edges of my property, lots of evergreens and twisty, vine-y branches.  I thought these would be a wonderful addition to our "not-so-real" tree.  I know, I know, I should have went with a real tree...and my original intention was to get a potted one so we could re plant it in the yard, but it wasn't in the cards this year! 

Do you see my poor Angel up top?  She's a little dim.  Her lights are burnt out so they will have to be replaced.  I think some little hands hands had something to do with her untimely demise!

So otherwise, I had some double sided scrapbook paper that had a little Scandinavian print feel to it, so out came the paper cutter and we began stapling.  Remember paper chains?  Ha!  What could be more elementary or simply handcrafted!  I confess.  The kids had no part in that decoration...they were off at school!  My five year old mind did it all!  Lol!

Next thing I added a whole bunch of pine cones and evergreen boughs from the yard into my tree to well, warm it up a bit.  It looked so artificial!  Then I went out behind the pond to the vines and began pulling some out.  I tucked a bunch of twiggy branches in and wound the longer vines around the tree itself.  I had some red gingham ribbon and I added that on too!  I think it needs another color though.  What to do you think? 

Most of my ornaments survived the trip South, so I dug them out yesterday and got them all up on the tree. 

Mostly snowmen, you see, my mom started me on that.  We have a "THING" with snowmen!

LETTERS TO SANTA

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Sam got a helping hand from Daddy writing his letter.

Emma and Jacob got busy pretty quickly working on their letters.  I found the cute little Santa letters in the Walmart 97 cent bin!  They also had some stickers and a card.  I know, I know...I caved to commercialism!  They were cute though!  And they came two in a box!  At least I was thrifty!

This would be the backside of Emma's letter.  I nearly fell over laughing.  Her images and words are so sweet and funny!  Up top Santa looks like he is screaming and has one tooth...and he's saying Hoo Hoo Hoo!  What can I say, she's my little artist :)

We also decorated little felt snowmen ornaments (imagine that, more snowmen) and put our names and the year on the back.  So, two things are checked off our holiday to do list. 

How's your list coming along?

wishing you a stress free decorating/celebrating season!

sue

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