Our Upstairs Tree

Meet our new tree. We got him last year when we traveled to Park City for Christmas so we could have something under which to put our presents. He was very inexpensive (and I used a coupon~ love that) and he served his purpose very well. After we returned from snowy Utah, we stashed him in the crawlspace and totally forgot that he existed. That is, until last week when Dabney suggested we bring him out of hibernation from the depths of the basement. We unpacked him from his box and set him up in the upstairs hallway with the smallish tree skirt I made for our first married Christmas when I was trying to save money so faithfully. The only problem now, was that we have a zero dollar budget with which to decorate our little fiber-optic fella.


As we all know, necessity is the mother of invention so we decided to brainstorm. We decided that we bake things pretty well around here so we resolved to bake our Christmas ornaments for our luxurious second Christmas tree. (I've always admired those huge houses on palatial estates with enormous themed Christmas trees in every room. Think the Biltmore or Winterthur.)

Let me apologize for the pictures- either I used the flash and you couldn't see the lights or I didn't use the flash and it was too dark to see the cookies.

Anyway, the kids had a blast cutting and baking the cookieboys, gingergirls and the cookie children and adorning our new upstairs tree with the fruit of their labors. Our ornaments are edible and they smell delightful, and if temptation overcomes one of the kids, namely child #3, its not the end of the world. The kids have felt so important knowing that they made the decorations and created their own tree. They love it dearly, always making sure that the switch is on and it's glowing warmly with it's colorful lights.

P.S. Because I know you're asking, Mom, Josh is not in the pictures because we were trying not to lead the little guy into temptation. He just can't resist grabbing handfuls of cookies and then running away as fast as he can.