The making of a Christmas Tree

I enjoy decorating my house for Christmas and so does my family.  Because of this, and other reasons, we have an artificial Christmas tree.   

Today I thought I'd share the making of a Christmas tree at our house.

It starts with putting up the Tree "trunk."

our trunk with a mess of lights ready to go on the future tree

After the trunk was up it was time to start putting on the limbs...which of course means the kids get to be involved.  I get the limbs out of our storage box and hand them to the kids and they bring them to their dad who then puts them in the tree trunk.

Then of course we have to shape our tree so it doesn't look TOO artificial.

trying to teach our sons how to shape the limbs 

After the limbs are shaped it's time to put the lights on.

Of course this year took a little longer than normal because it wasn't until AFTER we started putting them on that we remembered I threw half of them away last year for being broken (I actually have them in a box to be mailed to a Christmas light recycling program).  When we realized that I had to run to the store and buy more lights and THEN we got the lights put on the tree.

By the time all of this was done, with a nap for the kids in between, it was too late in the evening for us to put on the ornaments that night.  We had to feed the kids and get them ready for their week at school so.... the next night my husband and the kids finished decorating the tree while I was at work.

I love that he took pictures for me too ;)

So are tree has been up since the weekend after Thanksgiving and there has only been a couple of times we've had to remind the kids it is not a toy to be played with, which is nice.

We've even found our Elf on the Shelf, Nicole, enjoying our tree as a place to watch over us.

look closely and you can see Nicole towards the star at the top