Decorating the tree...

One year I wanted to decorate our Christmas tree with all "natural" ornaments and garland...you know, like stringing popcorn and cranberries, dried fruit and cinnamon sticks and hanging gingerbread cookies. We were in dental school at the time and I thought, maybe we can save some money by making our own decorations, right? Our tree was so pretty that year--I loved it! I decided that we were going to do this every year and make it our tradition.

Yes, well, good intentions only last so long and I was good for a couple of years. But, can I just tell you that it is SO HARD to string popcorn?!? They fall apart when you a push a needle through them and it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to string enough together to make a decently long strand. Plus, the wonderful smell of fresh cut Christmas tree gets drowned out, by the popcorn aroma. :) So we stopped stringing popcorn.

Cranberries are easier to string, but it takes way too many to circle around your tree, and are too expensive to just watch them dry on your tree for the next few weeks. So I bought some red beads instead.

Dried fruit is good, but it loses its smell and cinnamon sticks were hard to find and expensive as well. Which means, I no longer did them either. So, that has left us with gingerbread cookies...the lone survivor.

We have faithfully made gingerbread cookies to hang on our tree every year since. They smell yummy, but they aren't very tasty, so they make a very good choice to hang on the tree. (I am not tempted to eat any!)


Kendyl and Brityn love cutting the shapes in the dough.


And hanging them on the tree.


One must always reach as high as you can...

And wear your Christmas pajamas while doing it...

And look cute...

We gave a cookie to Ryder, so he'd feel included, and so we could see what he would do with it...

Hmmmmm...

Let's see how this tastes...yes, straight in his mouth!

Another tradition we have is that we sleep by the tree once it is all decorated. Just for one night, we leave the lights on and enjoy the ambience of the Christmas tree and let it lull us to sleep.


Sweet dreams.