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Blogmas Day 9- A look at our Christmas Tree

Each year, my Christmas tree gets less and less “decorated” by normal decorations.

My girls go out and make small ornaments or we make ornaments at home and I have been using less store bought ornaments.

I have a whole collection of old (antique) ornaments that I’m thinking about trying to sell (keep a very few but sell the rest) that I got from my grandma after she passed. She passed nearly 15 years ago and she had had the ornaments for a long time, most are actually older than I am.

We  bought a pre-lit tree, and instead of having lights or beads around it- we have a paper chain my oldest daughter made a year or two ago

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I bought a beautiful wreath off of Etsy that I was more than happy with. It was much nicer than i thought it was going to be (I bought it, so I already knew it was going to be good, I just was surprised by the material they used as the base)

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Instead of using actual candy canes, I’m using the pipe cleaner candy canes I made and posted on my other site, and instead of using store bought ornaments, I’m using some my girls made with other people or that we made at home like my pipe cleaner Christmas trees. You can find both tutorials clicking on the links.

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I have a few tutorials coming up with some other decorations I’m using. These crafts are kid tested and approved, if you’re interested in checking out the tutorials, click here and in the next few days they will be going up.

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Blogmas Day 8- favorite Chrismas/winter drink flavor

I guess since it is December and my last post was about Christmas, I’ll be joining in the Blogmas trend.

I will probably not be posting about it daily, I already missed the first 4 days (never heard about it until Twitter, to be honest)

Today is day 7. I work my day job in product demonstrations. Yesterday I was sampling cocoa- it was a variety pack with 5 different, mostly seasonal and holiday flavors. I had to taste two flavors- white chocolate and mint.

They were the best tasting hot chocolate I have ever drank. I buy peppermint mocha coffee creamer every year and drink the Peppermint Mocha almond milk lattes. Last night I also made myself some peppermint hard candy.

To me, not too much else says “flavor of the holidays” than peppermint chocolate.

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Day 7 Blogmas- gifts I got myself for under 50

I was given 50 to spend on myself right after Thanksgiving.

I had just recieved a catalog from NY and Company, my absolutely favorite clothing company.

I hit their Cyber week sales- 70-80%off plus free shipping and got myself two new sweaters. Later, I returned and grabbed this jacket.

I’ve been wearing it near daily since. Its light enough to keep me from frying when it’s slightly warmer but warm enough for snow.

I also havent really got a new purse for a while and the price was too good to resist so I grabbed one

I also needed gloves and found these. The glove and scarf set ended my 50

The price was so good, I grabbed several sets to give as gifts.

All these were a grand total of under 120 and I got a bit of gift shopping finished as well.

The sweaters are perfect, the coat cost a total of 21- an 80+ value if I had paid full price. I really think NY and Co has some of the best prices

Parenting

Christmas Traditions

Since starting a family, almost 8 years ago, I’ve been thinking about different holiday traditions.

As a young child, we got together with my mom’s side of the family a lot and not my dad’s that often.

When my grandma died (I was 13), we stopped getting together so much but I have a couple aunts we did get together with a lot- especially one who has always treated me like a daughter.

We still get together with her a lot.

Throughout the years, I have had jobs (especially 1) that had me so busy this time of the year (thank you, retail) so I barely had time to breath during the whole season. With the job change, I’m only working a few days a week so I have time to actually do stuff with my kids and it has me thinking on the lines of Christmas traditions.

I ran across my Facebook memories yesterday, after my 2 year old helped me bake cookies and found last year on the same day, she helped me bake cookies as well.

With our new found food restrictions, she and I can’t partake in events like cookie exchanges like my mom, cousins and aunts did one year- she couldn’t eat anything with butter or milk and I couldn’t eat anything with flour and certain other ingredients.

My mom and I were talking about both of us wanting to do our trees primarily in home made decorations and with a very few exceptions, mine is this year (we have a few football team ornaments and a few the girls really like but other than that, everything else was bought off Etsy or made by us)

We have the main celebration with my family on Christmas eve, his on Christmas day and ours Christmas morning with a few gifts on Christmas eve.

Over the years, I’ve slowly started incorporating some Yule rituals either privately or with my kids included and we’ll do that at home instead of celebrating Christmas in our home- since a lot of Yule traditions overlap with Christmas.

What types of traditions do you have with your kids?