Day 4 Trimming the Tree and decorations from the past

Today's Day 4 of our Countdown to Christmas was to decorate the tree and take our family portraits...well we got the tree up :) Portraits will have to wait until another day as we got carried away with the decorations and basically finished the house today! I love unwrapping each ornament as we decorate the tree.

Egg Carton Santa Meadow made
when she was little

Paper mache Santa Meadow made

Santa painted on a mussel shell
from a craft fair

Paper mache star Santa I made years ago

A vintage inspired ornament I made for
 last years Christmas cards and you can
find for sale in my Etsy shop

Felted mushroom I made
and also in my Etsy shop

My gnome

Owl I made last year (In my Etsy shop)
and the Santa behind it is from about 15 years ago

One of my many snowbabies :)

This little guy was made by
 Princessnimblethimble on Etsy...
I added a string to hang him on the tree

Driftwood Santa

Beautiful porcelain reindeer

Another Snowbaby

A Christmas walnut mouse I made when
I was a kid...must be an antique by now ;)

A spool wreath my 23 year old made
when she was little

A spark plug ornament I made for my husband
for our first Christmas together...he loved
to work on his truck back then

Family ornament I made for
Aayla's first Christmas

If you are interested my Etsy shop is HERE.

And now it's time to get some of those decorations on the tree :)

Aayla putting her first decoration on our tree

How do you like those bangs?

 

Lovin the snowmen decoration earrings :)

Nana Diana sporting a nice pair of decoration earrings too

Our finished tree :) Take note of the heavy branches on the bottom of the tree. The girls help to decorate the tree and LOVE to hang 4 or 5 or 6 or more decorations on 1 branch! Our tree isn't themed like some peoples trees but our decorations have been handmade throughout the years, or purchased on holidays...each one has a special memory with it.

So all done our tree is lop sided, heavily weighted in certain areas but full of love. I must admit, putting up the tree is one of my most stressful activities in the whole world (I am a little over protective of most of the ornaments and it has only been the past couple of years that I have allowed anyone else to help me decorate the tree).

After we finished the tree the girls helped decorate the rest of the family room too...not quite how I might have decorated myself but they had lots of fun with it.

Our mantle this year is a bit squishy as normally we set up the tree and most of the decorations in our living room / dinning room but since it is still full of stuff we are selling we had to shift things around for Christmas.

Ohh I almost forgot to tell you where we found Elfie this morning... he was hanging from the chandelier :)