It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's Christmas time, which I love. Of all of my worldly possessions, my Christmas decorations are among my favorites. In fact, I love them so much that I didn't purge very many of them when everything else went. Instead, I put them all on the crate. The crate that we'll see who know when? So, this year, we have none of our traditional baubles. But, that's okay because that means we'll have them all next year (we hope!)

That means that ingenuity is required to make our home festive this year. We inherited a 6 foot Christmas tree from someone who took a turn in our house some other year, so that was a good start. Then, Ryan suggested we make salt dough ornaments. He and I had done that our first Christmas and we actually treasured them and used them until they were ruined in a basement flood a few years ago.

Last weekend he and the kids cut out the dough while I ran some errands. Then, after baking all afternoon, they were ready to paint. Using paint and brushes purchased at the local Dollar Giant, we set to work!

Everybody took part in the painting!

Here are some of them drying.

This weekend, we tied ribbon through the holes and prepared to hang them on the tree.

Here they are, on the tree, along with the paper chain we made. Notice that the ones in the picture spell out CAMPBELL. Abby thought that idea up.

Here's our mantel, ready for the holiday!

Our humble, but precious tree.

It's our tradition to put up our tree on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and we always eat what my kids call "party foods" and watch a movie as part of the festivities. The last few years, the movie of choice has been Elf.

Ready for bed, but not before some Christmas tree silliness!