Our home grown Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas everyone!

This year, instead of buying a full size Christmas tree and throwing it out later and add to the trash, I decided to be creative and minimize the carbon footprint of Christmas in our house. And while I was at it, I also decided the kids can learn a thing or two about what "naughty" and "nice" means... And voila, the Mission Christmas tree was created...

Right after Thanksgiving, I took a green poster board and cut out a Christmas tree structure. I made the trunk from brown construction paper. This "Base" tree was then attached to the side of the fridge! I also made an ornament from cardboard as a starting decoration and did some basic decoration on the tree.

I marked one side as Reya's side and the other as Rithik's side. Then I told the kids that they had a whole month to decorate the tree, BY BEING NICE!... Basically if they are nice, they will earn stickers, ornaments and stamps that they could use to decorate their side of the tree. The kids also out up their wish lists and letters to Santa there and they started working to earn "nice" decorations.

By the Christmas eve, the tree was fully decorated and I had 2 NICE and happy elves who were proud of their accomplishments...

Operation Christmas Tree was definitely a success and the kids and I are looking forward to another mission like this soon... Mission Valentines may be!!!

Preparing for Santa Claus

 

This is our Christmas from 2 years ago. It all started with a tree. This tree below that Reya made in her school. A simple paper Christmas tree that she colored and decorated with glitter. And that got me thinking....

I helped Reya make paper Christmas stockings to hang... again a simple cutout from construction paper decorated with scrap paper bits and ice cream sticks... and we hung them on the fire place

We always got the kids a gift on Christmas, but with a tree (even a fake one), I couldn't resist wrapping the gifts and putting them under the tree as a surprise on Christmas morning. Not all the gifts were fancy, but I took care to individually wrap them in diff papers to give the arrangement a visual interest. And, lastly I topped it up with a letter from Santa with a list of things for the kids to do before next Christmas (there is no such thing as a free gift.... they all come with strings attached... LOL)...

And that turned out to be a really good surprise for the kids...

Let's see what I can do for this Christmas!

Signing off,

Shilpa