decorating

I should have posted all of this a week ago, but then we were all sick and then it was birthday time and then I was tired or something.  So, we're getting around to it now.  

I was inspired by my sweet friend Hannah who found a little tree for her son to decorate.  I thought that was a great idea.  I don't know why it hadn't really crossed my mind yet.  Maybe because I didn't know if we'd be getting a real tree yet - and we aren't exactly surrounded by wilderness.  I could probably have found a shrub to chop in the neighborhood...but then some old Italian woman probably would have come out her house and yelled at me and shook her fist.

Anyway.  Long story short.  I found a little tree at the tree lot.  They wanted too much for it, so I didn't buy it.  But, the next day I went back and offered them five bucks for it and they happily sold it to me.  So, score.  

Abby was pretty excited about her tree.  It took us a few days, but we finally found time to do some crafts and make some ornaments for our tree.  Abby really really liked this.  It was probably the first time I've given her free reign of a glue stick.  Add in some crayons, markers, glitter, pom-poms, and sequins and you have yourself a happy (if sticky) toddler. 

decorating her first christmas tree ornament

 look at this glue stick pro...

She had help, but Abby did more of these ornaments than meets the eye.  

Here's our snowman.  

She put all the glue on, placed the pom-poms, sequins, and nose. I just help keep things straight-ish.

Here's our second tree ornament.  I drew lines on the tree and she put the glue on the lines and placed the sequins.  She really only needed a little bit of help when the sequins would stick to her....as her hands were pretty sticky by this point. 

I only have a phone shot of our tree thus far.  We found a topper, made a few more ornaments and Karen figured out a way to keep it standing. (we used rocks from the driveway...which is a post within itself...Abby's a bit obsessed with rocks).  Abby added the big ornaments to the basket and insists that they stay there. 

I'm pretty sure I speak for Abby when I say we both had a lot of fun decorating her tree. It was a good project.  She likes her tree and says "Hi" to it every day.  Sometimes she tries to hug it and sometimes she puts other things like bows, hairbands, or toys on it as well.

Of course, we did finally decorate our big tree as well.  Kyle was sick, but we decided to go ahead and pull out the decorations.  Abby's favorite part were definitely the lights.  She was quite impressed with them.

Again, she was more of a help than I thought she would be.  She really enjoyed putting ornaments on the tree.  It's so funny to look at a tree decorated by a toddler.  All the ornaments are clumped together in one or two spots and nothing over 3 feet off the ground.  

We don't have a tree topper for our tree yet - I haven't found the perfect one.  Traditionally, we just put a Red Sox hat on top -so I should probably just go get that out of my closet until we find a more traditional topper.  ;-)

In the week or so since our decorating got done, Abby has bonded with certain star ornaments we have.  She goes up to the tree, holds them, and sings "twinkle twinkle"  We've allowed her to carry 2 or 3 of the stars around.  On Sunday, she opted to take her star ornament to church instead of her baby doll....and the green star ornament gets pushed in her stroller regularly.  Funny girl.

So, there's our tree decorating post.  Good memories.  Good times.  Maybe even some good traditions started.