Our Christmas Tree

When my husband and I were dating we used to belong to a fabulous home group where we were fed, watered and nurtured by an extremely loving American couple. In fact my wedding dress was made upon their dining table (it was the only one big enough!). I used to love their Christmas decorations, their tree was covered in all sorts of decorations and they explained to us the tradition that they had grown up with where a new ornament was placed on the tree every year.

We had been married for 7 months by the time we had our first Christmas together. However our very first decoration was acquired on our honeymoon! We were passing through Monterrey in California and saw a Christmas shop and just could not resist getting this decoration.

As you can see 13 years later the salt dough is not fairing too well, but it started our collection of tree decorations.

Every year at least one new decoration has been added, I have a few more that I thought you might like to see,

this one was to celebrated the first Christmas of our first child.

these ones I made for my 2nd child's first Christmas, pictures of the pair of them which I popped into little craft frames and hung on with ribbon.

Of course since the children have come along there have been lots and lots of homemade decorations made, these are two different angels that I got all the children in our Junior church making many years ago.

This beautiful pair are from America again, this time we were seeing some of New England in the 'fall' and happened upon a Christmas shop and found these lovely clay angels.

It has been a real delight the last few years when the children have gotten old enough to appreciate some of the more delicate decorations and have joined in decorating the tree. They love to hear the stories of where different decorations have come from and have a good giggle at the ones they have made. This year will be our 2nd Christmas with our eldest since her mummy died. Last year she was just a 'guest', this year she is part of our nuclear family. She did not want to help decorate the tree and took some time out by herself while the younger two took part.

However I was very relieved when she came back in and joined us to have the honour of putting the angel on the top (the other two have never done this as they are not tall enough!). With all the Christmas cuddly toys, hats and bits lots of fun was had and we managed to get a lovely family photo (once husband had worked out how to do the self timer on his camera).

Happy Christmas from us all to you x x x x x