I like to get their ornaments at Hobby Lobby where they are inexpensive but unique. My oldest is married and we gave her the ornaments to take with her when she married to make their own traditions. On that night I give each of them a new ornament representing something about that year. The evening of decorating is a treat even to my grown daughter (she’s single) who comes back to join us. I do very minimal decorating at Christmas (or any holiday) but getting a real tree every year is a tradition. What are your tree decorating traditions? Do you keep ornaments each year or make new ones? Leave a comment and let me know! I have boys- they like that sort of thing. The tree looks different each year and we don’t have to carefully wrap each ornament as we put it away. Instead, when we’re done with the tree we remove the lights, chop it up and burn it in the fireplace, snowflakes and all. Sometimes we stick them right to a branch and other times we tie a loop of thread on the snowflakes so they dangle from the branches. The little ones can’t cut the snowflakes yet, but they love finding branches to hang them on. We all enjoy sitting around the table, telling stories and jokes and creating new patterns. We found some really cool snowflake patterns and figured out how to fold the paper so we could get 6 points (which is what real snowflakes have). We got rid of our 6 boxes of Christmas decor (Now we have 1). What a lot of work it was! And each child had their own special ornaments, and if I had neglected to mark them, there would be fights (“No! I had the snowman with the red scarf! You had the one with the green!”) We came to this tradition after many years of saving ornaments and hauling out boxes and boxes of them. Then we sit around the table, share our 2 pairs of scissors and cut out paper snowflakes to hang on the tree. ( The large bulbs that got so hot one could melt tinsel on the bulbs. They are multicolored and are the closest I could find to the size I grew up with. We use 2 different sized lights- large globes and small globes. Then we make the trek home and get dripped on as the snow melts off the branches while we try to get the tree into the tree stand.Ī day or two later we spend an evening decorating the tree. Meanwhile, I wander in the semi-quiet and admire animal tracks and snow covered fir trees. Most years there is snow, in which all the males proceed to have a snowball fight and white wash the teenagers who for some reason, seem to beg for it. It’s always so still and beautiful, well, until we get there. It’s about an hour drive up to the mountain, we always go with our second family (very good friends) and normally we’re the only ones there. That means hiking up in the mountains and finding the perfect tree: I like them sparse (or minimal as my kids say), not too tall and more on the skinny side. Our first Christmas tradition is getting a tree.
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