A Little Christmas

My household is a *touch* on the active side.  Okay...so things are pretty busy around here.  The 1-year old is especially busy and doesn't adhere to many rules.  Consequently, I decided that I was not going to put up any of my 'real' decorations this year.  I had visions of our tree crashing to the floor and the mess that would follow.  Besides, I didn't want to be after C all the time about leaving the tree alone...and I didn't want to have to gate it.  So, handmade ornaments were in our future for the month of December.

On Black Friday, one of the blogs I subscribe to discussed the ebook The Truth in Tinsel.  The premise is to do a short devo with your kids each day of December leading up to Christmas and make a corresponding Christmas ornament.  Perfect!  It followed right along with my desire for homemade ornaments...and the desire of my kids to do 'crafty' things.

I was worried that we wouldn't have enough ornaments to decorate the tree at the beginning...but as we didn't decorate the tree until the 20th (or something similarly ridiculous), it wasn't a problem.  The 'problem' became storing the ornaments waiting for the tree to be ready...oh well.  

It was fun.  We made lots of different types of ornaments ranging from old CDs with glass beads glued on to symbolize Mary's Song to salt-dough mangers to paper dolls of Mary and Elizabeth.  It was fun.  We did get rather behind by the end...some days are hard to fit a 5 minute devo and 10 minute craft but we managed to do one after almost every meal the last couple of days and finished with a cross on Christmas Eve.  

To decorate our tree, we also made a string of popcorn and cranberries.  In the beginning, the boys kept eating it, but now that it is good and stale, they leave it alone.  We made another batch of salt dough ornaments left over from our Sunday night program, too.  The kids made a few things in Sunday school that we put on the tree.

It was a beautiful tree and we've enjoyed it very much...and I've enjoyed letting the kids decorate it (and consequently undecorate it) as much as they've wanted.  It has been the perfect tree for this time of our lives.  :)