Christmas Tree

It seems like our Thanksgiving Tree was assembled and disassembled in record time. Christmas is here and I feel like I haven't drawn a breath - at least not a big enough one to relax in anyway.

This year I have been pondering what to do about a Christmas tree as our youngest bunny is now 15 months - extremely determined, extremely strong and extremely inquisitive. I just have visions of us turning our back for one second and the little chap attempting to scale the tree bring the whole ornament laden thing down on top of him.

So with our branch sitting empty waiting for inspiration we decided this year our branch will be our Christmas Tree.

I wrapped the branch in fairy lights & some berry garlands that I have had for years (they are a little past their prime - poor things.) I wanted to let my eldest loose on decorating the tree - but I had not taken into account how heavy Christmas decorations are. So we had to sort through our stash for all the lightest items - then I let her loose ....

My husband loves real Christmas Tree's - he loves the smell that they fill the house with - but I can't help feeling a little pleased that our beloved branch has saved one little Christmas Tree this year ....... 

Wishing you and your family a very Happy Holiday this year.


Take a look at the other projects we have done with our tree so far this year:
Valentine Tree
Swedish Easter Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree
Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree 
Halloween Tree
Thanksgiving Tree

Thanksgiving Tree

It has become time again to change our seasonal tree. We took off the mice, spiders and cobwebs to make our Thanksgiving Tree.

I found some fake autumnal leaf vines on sale at JoAnn's and wound them around the bare branches. Then we picked out some yellow, orange, red, green & brown card and the girls mixed their own paint colors (from green, red & gold) and made hand-prints on the card. 

Once the paint was dry we cut out the hand-prints and hung them on the tree with gold ribbon.

On the back of each hand-print leaf my eldest bunny wrote all the things we were grateful for. Here is their very cute list:

the color green

pasta & meat

blankets

coloring

toys

Castro (our dog)

food

my sister & brother

my scooter

friends

color tree

blanket bunny

gold & silver glitter

TV

paint

chocolate

clothes

Mummy

Daddy

Ariel

bed

my beautiful children

garden

Cinderella

dressing up clothes

leaves

Hilda

Oma (German for Grandma)

Papa

Teddy

the whole entire world

Listening to the girl decide what they were thankful for was so cute - this might well be our new family tradition.

Take a look at the other projects we have done with our tree so far this year:
Valentine Tree
Swedish Easter Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree
Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree 
Halloween Tree

Paper Roll Halloween Tree

We were all quite sad to take down our Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree. But we have had fun decorating our Halloween tree with paper rolls and tissues.

Creep crawly spiders live in our Halloween tree.

Mice live in our Halloween tree. 

Painted paper roll owls live in our tree. 

Twirly Halloween icicles (made from painted paper rolls) hang in our tree in pumpkin golds, purple and black. 

Strips of tissue hang in our tree while bats loom over head. 

I hope you are decorating for Halloween too!

Take a look at the other projects we have done with our tree so far this year:
Swedish Easter Tree
Valentine Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree
Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree

Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree

What we do with this branch we found in the garden never ceases to amaze me. In case you have missed the progression of our year long tree project check out the other trees we have made so far.

Swedish Easter Tree
Valentine Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree

This idea came to me as I was washing up looking out of the window and looking at butterflies flutter around the garden in the sunshine.

The colors in our butterfly tree are really amazing. 

As you can tell we made a lot of coffee filter butterflies for this tree (over 60!)

We decorated out coffee filters by various methods. The traditional markers & water, dipping the filters in liquid watercolors & glitter. 

 Folded & dipped in liquid water color. 

Water soluble markers & water. 

Dipping in liquid watercolors was by far the preferred method.

We had to hang washing lines all over the kitchen to dry all the filters. We also experimented about how we hung the filters to ensure we got lots of different results. 

Glitter glue added a magical sparkle and prevented the spread of the liquid water colors. Folding coffee filters and hanging them together or on top of each other gave different - but beautiful effects - colors leaking from all angles.

Even my 2 year old bunny enjoyed the activity.

Not very precise - although she really is trying - just look how carefully she is holding that filter. 

Our kitchen towels were soaked but ever so pretty once we had finished.

My eldest wanted to make butterflies with two filters at once. It was a genius idea - giving us some very large and full butterflies.

And we made some dragon flies too. 

You might be wondering what became of all those pretty tissue paper cherry blossoms. Well my girls loved gathering the 'fallen petals' and they are still playing with them. I'm thrilled - this tissue paper has had 3 uses so far - wrapping gifts to pretty tree blossoms to endless games of gathering, grouping and carrying around the pretty posies.

We left our little egg carton caterpillar on the tree - obviously one day he will turn into a butterfly too.

Happy butterfly spotting this summer!

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Please do not forget about the charity I Spy quilt - we are still looking for fabric 4"x4"scrap donations. 

Easter Tree

The ornaments from our Valentines Tree have been taken down and carefully stored for next year and my eldest has been busy at work decorating our now permissed Easter Tree!! You can read about how our tree came to life here. (But just to quickly recap this is a branch we found in our garden and the girls lovingly decorated it with glue and glitter. Our aim is to keep the tree up all year around and have the girls make crafts and decorations for it with a seasonal or holiday theme.) 

We made some cute hanging flower ornaments out of cupcake cases. 

I had found these sweet bright birds in Michaels. 

 

Paper eggs got covered with fluffy pom poms. 

 

We tied our colorful feathers to the end of the branches with bright green ribbon. 

 

What the kids see as they walk around and underneath it looks is pretty cool. 

  

We are all getting so much enjoyment from this branch we found in the garden. I can't wait to see how the tree develops and morphs over the coming year. 

Our Valentine Tree

I recently saw a picture of a Swedish Easter Tree and I fell in love. I have been planning to make one with the girls for Easter this year. Last weekend we had a lot of snow and we were a little house bound.

A week or so ago I had found a large branch in the garden for this project. I armed the little ones with paint brushes and glitter glue (1 part Elmers Glue, 1 part water, 3 parts glitter - you can get huge pots of glitter at Michael's.) I was amazed at the attention span that the girls had for this project. They painted the tree for at least an hour - which I thought was impressive for a 2 and nearly 4 year old.

 

My nearly 4 year old was so excited at the prospect of our Easter tree that when Daddy said we couldn't put up an Easter Tree up in February (ba-hum-bug) there were a lot of tears. I did feel for the little one - having painted the tree for an hour and then being told the tree would not be displayed until March - it did seem a little mean. So when Daddy finally gave in and said it could be a Valentine Tree - we could make valentines and hang them on the tree - and when Valentine's Day was over we could then turn it into an Easter Tree. The little one was made happy again.

We had SO much fun (2hrs straight - with a cookie break) making valentines to hang from the tree.

 

Perfect 5 minute mini projects for her - which involved a lot of glue, paper punches, scissors, gems, ribbon. She was in heaven - and I think the result looks really cute. I also made some mini tulle pom poms for her to hang too.

 

As with a Swedish Easter Tree we added feathers - but I glued them to ribbon and then tied them to a tree with a bow. This means we will be able to quickly change them when Easter comes along!

I'm usually a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to crafts - but I loved all the little trinkets my eldest made - with all their random imperfections. She will also be really excited to come home from school on Thursday and hang all the valentine cards she gets from class.

We put our tree into a tall vase filled with glass pebble and displayed it proudly in the middle of our coffee table.

So much fun was had - and it looks so good (the photos really do not do it justice) - that I plan to make this a seasonal tree - it will be with us all year (hear that Daddy?) and we will do seasonal projects and hang them on our tree - Easter will be next - then Summer, Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas .... can we think of anymore?

Daddy will be wishing he had just let us put up the Easter Tree in February.