Ready for Christmas

It's December 13, and I'm feeling pretty good about where we are on the ol' Christmas To Do list! It helps that my kids are older and the Santa list has shortened considerably as the price per item has risen. It also helps that I've lowered my holiday expectation and no longer try to do everything for everyone!

This year's focus was on the tree. Or, should I say trees? I concentrated my efforts on getting the living and family room trees decorated. The last two years, I've had to delegate the job to my kids. They did a fine job, but let's face it... it looked like a bunch of boys had thrown stuff in the general direction of the tree and called it a day because that's pretty much their method of decorating! Our trees were in some dire need of TLC.

For years, I've wanted to turn our Christmas tree into a FAMILY Tree. As always, it's a work in progress, but I LOVE the story that our trees are now telling!

Here's our family room tree: this one focuses on our immediate family. It holds every Christmas ornament that my kids have made over the year. It also has a nice collection of our block ornaments.

About a month ago, I stumbled upon some fabulously thin wood plates that I just knew would look great as ornaments. They measure about 5x6". They seriously took less than 10 minutes per ornament (and that's only because I decorated the backside of each ornament with some festive paper).


I think they add a nice splash of color!

The best part was the trip down memory lane as I searched our Christmas' Past for the perfect pictures.

My boys-nearly-men will never, NEVER get dressed up like this again...


And here is tree #2:


Our living room tree is a bit more formal, but it's every bit as committed to remembering family!

I found these beautiful mini-frames a year ago on a girlfriend's get-away in Boston. So glad I bought them. Just wish I would have bought a few dozen more!

Of course, no story is complete without my kids jumping in to help tell it. Dog came flying into this picture, complements of my sixteen-year-old. She looks as surprised as I was!