Christmas Decorating

One of the things that really got me sad in Singapore was seeing all the Christmas trees and how expensive they were. Even the little one from IKEA we purchased was WAY more than it should have been. It was a little scrawny tree, but we made the best of it. This year I decided to make all the decorations since a string of lights was $25 and even plastic globes were outrageous too. I figured I had enough craft supplies to make something up.  As always, Patrick was willing and able to get the tree together. He did like the simpleness of this years tree. It went together in three parts as opposed to the tree in NY that we had to drag out of the basement in parts because it was so heavy, and then you had to muscle it together and the prelit lights were always a struggle.

 This little baby whipped up fast! As a kid I remember the excitement of putting up our Christmas tree. My mom would dole out the ornaments to put on in an orderly manner. I really tried to do that with the boys, but whew! they have fast grabby hands. I keep trying to remind myself that they are young and after a few years there will be a rhythm to our tradition.

 We picked out a star from the big decorations pile that is selling at Ikea as well. Here Ronin is putting on our homemade banner and the little babies are just ripping the rest of the house apart. There were some moments of overwhelming mayhem, but we made it through.

And look at this face.... he loves it, right?!

We finally got it together and it was so small we had to put it up on a table to help it feel like a real tree. We added some ribbon and raffia to the top to finish off the look. (We wanted it to look fuller than it actually was.) 

We put our advent books under it and already it was feeling festive! 

 I love Christmas time. No matter where in the world you live.

All our stockings were hung with tape for the few minutes the tape actually worked. I have their names written on masking tape right now but fully intent to get some real letters on there soon!

We had hot chocolate (can we say sweaty!) and watched "It's Christmastime Charlie Brown" (or whatever that one is called). We spent some good time together as a full 4-children family and laid listening to Christmas music and looking at the lights once the babies were asleep. It was a good start to our first Christmas away from home.