I Surprised Myself With Craftiness - The Christmas Post!

Normally, I'm the person who steals ideas from everyone else when it comes to being crafty.  Looking back now, I realize that I actually had one idea that I can honestly say I never swiped from someone else.  Of course, it had to revolve around my favorite holiday.  Here's how it went down...

It started with the single years:  The Christmas tree was small, but it was mine.  Every ornament was placed in the perfect spot.  It was cute, cozy and mine!

Then came the newlywed years:  The Christmas tree was twice the size...I had to share now, it was hard to get in the house and needed WAY more ornaments than we had.  Thus began the need to buy more ornaments to fill it up.  Ornament purchases became a habit, a very addictive habit, I might add.  I think someone in my family passed that addiction down to me, right mom?

The Two Thirds Tree...the bottom third has no ornaments!

And on to the new parent years:  In reality, this didn't start until the girls were about a year old.  The Christmas tree was still big, still had lots of ornaments on it, but they were getting broken at a very high frequency.  

Year Two, getting the hang of things

Finally came the "Mommy, can I help?" years.  That started when they were about 2.  They loved to hang ornaments on the tree.  They loved to hang every single ornament on the same branch.  They loved to relocate ornaments every ten minutes or so.  They broke so many ornaments.  So.  Many.  Ornaments.

This got me to thinking...what if I tried to distract them from screwing up MY tree and let them have a tree of their own?  Mind you, this revelation took two years to come to fruition and only fully formed after I read an article about how to make and paint dough ornaments.  Remember doing that when you were a kid?  So did I and as so many crafts in our house are born, after I shook off my memories of a simpler time, I was skidding around the kitchen, collecting the necessary items to bake up the cutest little ornaments ever!

I baked SO many ornaments!  I think there were probably five dozen when all was said and done.  I went shopping online and found 7 foot prelit artificial tree for a STEAL and figured that could be the tree the girls decorate.  It also doubles as added "Griswold" as it sits in the dining room window for the whole neighborhood to see.


Year one, we made popcorn and painted as many of the cookie ornaments as we could before we got tired of the craft.  Year two, we chose a new craft ornament (foam snowmen) and year three, we did bell snowmen and reindeer.  The girls get ornaments from my parents every year and they are added to the tree, too.  The tree is overloaded with ornaments, but its theirs to decorate and they love making new ornaments to add each year.

I have them mark their creations with their name and the date.  That way, when they're older, they'll have craft ornaments from each year to share with their kids.  It's a lot of fun and really, who thinks one tree is enough?  Not me!!!!

Of course, it's not always easy when there's candy involved

I still haven't figured out what their 2011 ornament will be, but I'm leaning toward something with lots of GLITTER!