Once Upon a Tree.....

On Sunday, 230 people came through our house during our church's house tour.  Let me tell you  - nothing makes you realize how old and yucky your decorations are like a Christmas house tour.  What I thought was cute and kitchy when I put it away in the red and green totes last January was just plain ugly when I unwrapped it this year with my "everyone is going to see this" eyes.   It was the perfect excuse to spend endless hours pinning impossible craft projects and color coded Christmas rooms on Pinterest.    It did however, end up being lots of fun and forced my hand - to complete all of those Christmas ideas swirling in my head.

The new addition that I liked the best was the childrens' book tree.  I have always wanted to make one and this was the year.   It was a little work - but worth it.  The children choose their favorite pages in their favorite books, Bart scanned and printed them or we used pages from old tattered copies, I painted wood circles and rectangles from Hobby Lobby and we hung them on the tree.  We added any ornament from our existing collection that featured a book character (we had more than we thought), added last year's DIY felt chain and painted giant wooden letters to spell "Read" - to tie it all together.  I thought for a bit about what the tree topper should be.  I discovered it while wrapping all of our Christmas books for the nightly unwrap and read (another Pinterest idea).    In 1975, I received a copy of The Night Before Christmas from Santa.  It has beautiful illustrations but is really falling apart.  Not wanting to part with, I had Bart drill a hole all the way through the side, attached a ribbon tie to secure it around the top of the tree and Voila!  - an old friend has a new place to shine atop the tree.

What I love most about the tree is that my family loves it.  It is nice to look over at the tree and see our favorite pages displayed - its like old friends visiting for Christmas.

What do you love that you could put on a tree?   More house tour pics tomorrow!