Holiday Decorating

I love decorating for Christmas, and look forward to it every year.  For the past few years, though, we haven't made much of a deal of it for a variety of reasons.  We were going to do the same this year, until I got a call from my sister asking if her daughters could help me trim the tree.  I was a little surprised since her children are being raised Jewish, but apparently they love ornaments and Christmas trees.  But, could I please have a real tree (we always had artificial ones), and could the ornaments also not be too Christmas-y.  Ummm...okay?  Can you tell that my family is a little demanding?

Since I used to make such a big deal out of Christmas decorating, I had enough ornaments for 3 large trees.  So these "requests" were easily granted, and my nieces had a large selection of ornaments to choose from.  I decided to make this a family event and had my brother's children join the fun.  I figured, let's celebrate early with the kids and then have a quiet, peaceful Christmas week with the rest of my family.

Some lessons I quickly learned when decorating with 2 six-year old girls and 1 independent toddler:

• Give kids under the age of 10 shatterproof ornaments only.  Most of my ornaments are glass and very delicate.  I thought that the six year olds could handle them carefully, which they tried their best to, but they're also a little uncoordinated and like to cluster a bunch of ornaments on one branch until all the ornaments fall.  My toddler niece was the only one who didn't break anything because she was given shatterproof ornaments that I purchased just for her.
• Have a nice glass of wine before decorating a tree with kids. I can't tell you how traumatic it was to listen repeatedly to shattering glass, particularly since some of the ornaments broken were those that I had collected during my travels.  I had to take deep breaths constantly.  
• What you give to one, you must give to the other.  If the broken ornaments weren't enough, try listening to two girls arguing over who got to put up what.  I had to separate the ornaments into two equal piles to get a little peace.
• Take a nice, long nap to recover.  Who knew decorating a tree could be so exhausting?

When the tree was done, I really earned the title of Awesome Aunt!

The finished tree:

The other tree:

The Christmas quilts I made for the occasion:

Hope your holiday season is fun and stress-free! :)