Do you have a Christmas tree tradition?  Do you cut your own?  Decorate together?  I love the scent of a fresh tree so our tradition has always been to either cut our own or pick out a fresh tree.  Here in this picture we are bringing it home. It’s taller than my 6.2 hubby.  I was pretty proud of myself because I got them to go down on the price from $55 to $35.  Nothing like wheeling and dealing!

I started decorating for Christmas early this year, but it’s still in process because I have lots of little odds and ends that have been forgotten like putting the ribbon around the stairs. But I can finally say my Gingerbread Man theme Christmas tree is finished! I couldn’t decide if I should add more ribbon but maybe next year, as filler.  What do you think: more ribbon or not?

The tree is in front of our window that gets direct sunlight so this is the best I can do on the photos.

It’s not over the top decorated but I think it’s plenty enough for our taste.  The fun thing about our Christmas tree is that it’s pretty much 70% homemade! But mostly ornaments made by me.  My kids have made ornaments for the tree but surprisingly enough not that many.

I’m not sure when the wearing silly Christmas hats to decorate the tree, started but we’ve been doing it for years now. This year our tree decorating was a family and friends event.

Oh and dog, too.

I loved seeing everyone pitch in, though I must admit usually the next day I go back and move ornaments around. Usually the ornaments are strung to the lights or there are pockets of empty spaces because they just put them in one or two areas (down at the bottom).

I had to get a picture of my hubby stringing the lights because last year he declared that his only job was to put the tree in the stand.  I didn’t even ask him to put the lights on this year. But he surprised me and did it on his own and I was so very thankful.

Here’s our  little guy putting on the “last” ornament–the angel.

In the image above you can see some of our homemade ornaments a bit better. I love hanging our homemade ornaments because I can remember making most of them.  Christmas tree ornaments here are really expensive and they don’t have after Christmas sales so I had no choice but to get crafty.  This year I spent most of my time working on the Gingerbread men garland you see going around the tree.   I either made them from scratch or turned our drab plastic ornament to fab by adding some fun little touches to them.

I must admit though this garland started off as a lovely idea but quickly got out of hand. I made about 75 gingerbread men but after purchasing our tree that’s over 6ft tall and really wide, I quickly realized it was going to take more than that.  I ended up making about 200 gingerbread men so that it could go around our whole tree. It wasn’t hard but I was ready to be done after my second batch of men. I’m just thankful that I didn’t have to paint the gingerbread men.

I shared my recipe earlier today for the all natural gingerbread men salt dough in the image above, using my secret ingredient so it smells wonderful and they turn out brown.

Our front door has my diy Santa Claus Wreath that I made in for less than $5 and in 10 minutes!

Oh and here’s our fun little village. We’ve been buying one house every year to slowly grow our little village. We don’t have a lot of room in our house so our village is going to be small.

Christmas is such a fun time of the year for our family–I love our traditions. Do you see how my son can do that weird eye thing?  He has one eye go left and the other right.  Crazy and annoying because he likes to show us his trick when we are taking pictures.