Christmas is Brian and I’s favorite time of the year. It embraces all things we love about life and we live in the most festive town in the United States, which is perfect for my heart! Our traditions include baking shortbread and ginger cookies, cranberry bread, building fires and drinking the coffee we roasted. We go to as many festivities as we can. In the past 4 days the kids have attended three different Christmas programs and this morning I was needing that quiet moment at home.

Christmas for us begins the day after Thanksgiving. Brian and I take down all the Thanksgiving decor and start the set up for Christmas. The goal is to get it all done before Esther’s birthday, the 1st. The boys’ birthday is only 3 weeks before Esther’s (2019 saw them all age 6 for three weeks!)  so I try to help separate their birthday experiences with an official change of seasons. Now that the kids are older they love to help (we are still working on their understanding of the word “help”). Meaning they usually end up being sent outside to do “something.” Anything. Anything other than stomping on the Christmas lights as we untangle them in the floor. Of course once we are done we discover their handy work in the yard.

This morning I was freshly reminded of that something they did. My industrious kids “planted” trees this year at the front steps of our porch. Which means they broke the biggest branches they could off the pine trees in our yard, dug holes and stuck them in the ground. It looks like what you would expect when you put a 7 foot pine branch in a 6 inch deep hole. Embracing my first morning home all week I decided to re-purpose my new “trees.” This is something I have wanted to do at Christmas ever since we moved here and it was so fun. Thanks for inspiring the project kids!

I tied them together with twine and added cedar and pine cones that had fallen around the yard. I took me about an hour, but I was waiting on loads of laundry anyway. The girls helped me collect my cedar branches and had such fun playing dolls while I tied branches together in the floor. In the past we tried to keep a tree on the front porch, but the wind spoils our plans each year, so this year I focused on the door. Nothing like a country Christmas!

‘Tis the season!

Leslie