the tree: 2010

Every year, my family says that we have the prettiest tree yet. I'm not sure if that's always true, but we do love our trees. Mainly because A) since switching to a real tree, we've been in love with it (kudos to my 6-year-old sister, Grace, for choosing this year's tree!), and B) the ornaments are made fresh each year.

Why fresh ornaments? Because we like making them, and coming up with a new idea every November. But because this could be an overwhelming task, we keep the ornaments super simple, yet elegant.

This year, everything was made from pages from old books. I bought two books that were falling apart (a Mark Twain, and Swiss Family Robinson) at a garage sale earlier in the fall for just $2. That was pretty much the entire cost for the decorations.



The 3D circle ornament is folded circles glued together. The snowflake at the top is just stamped (using Katie's stamps), cut, and strung. The walnut boats (my favorite!) were made based on these. The hearts were a simplified variation of these (due to the small pages that we were working with). I also made some accordion folded medallions like the ones that Erin makes. I seriously wish I had seen all of the lovely book page ideas from Jami Nato's blog, but I do love what we have.

I made the topper by removing all of the pages from one of the books, and attaching a star to the front. Then I hot glued it to the top of the tree so that it is wrapped around the very top branch.

My sister made all of the garland and I LOVE it! She always gets the garland, and it always ends up so very tedious. But also so very pretty.

To complete the tree area, I cut out snowflakes from the book pages, and hung them in the front window. They were rather delicate, so the snowflakes are simple, but I still like them.

So there's our happy little tree this year. And may I confess, I already have a couple ideas for next year? Crazy, I know!