Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

We haven't had a Christmas tree of our own since before we moved to Kentucky, since before we had children. I love Christmas and I love Christmas trees. But we simply did not have room to store our decorations in our little apartment and there wasn't enough space to put a tree up anyway. We are in a house this year, but all of our Christmas decor is still buried in storage. I assumed we just wouldn't be able to do a tree again this year and like the last several years I comforted myself by saying, "next year." Then my friend Stephanie suggested that we make the best of the situation by making all of our ornaments. Stephanie is crafty and creative. I am not. But I decided to do it anyway and it's been so fun. I was determined not to spend any money. My in-laws own 25+ acres so we drove out to their house to cut down our tree. (Note: Aubrey did her own hair this day)
The kids and I spent an entire day making ornaments. We made cinnamon/applesauce ornaments, orange slices, cut out dough ornaments that we painted, hung pictures of the kids and strung popcorn.

Painting was fun and messy.

I kept some of the orange slices in the oven too long but I kind of liked the burnt look.

I made an ornament out of each of the kid's hand prints. This is Evelyn's. I love it!

My three gifts under the tree! The kids are really proud of their work!

There it is! We borrowed the tree stand and the lights. Everything else we made. (No Tree skirt this year . . . the kids don't mind). I have lots of ornaments in storage. They are beautiful, color coordinated ornaments with white lights. My tree always looked so pretty. But THIS tree is beautiful with it's colored lights and hand crafted ornaments because it's says "children" all over it. It's certainly not an "adult" tree and that is fine by me!

Unfortunately our tree is sick. Despite the fresh cut it won't drink water. The needles are not brown but they are falling off at an incredible rate. In fact, we laughed last night when we noticed that some of the bottom branches don't have needles at all anymore. I'm okay with it. I really am. After all, Christmas isn't about the tree.