A little Christmas tour...

Welcome to my little Christmas tour.  This year we don't have a ton of decorations up because we have a toddler.  Toddler=Broken ornaments and unwrapped presents.  So everything we put out is hard to break or too big to throw.  Our living room has our "traditional tree" that we went and cut down all by ourselves.  For the past few years we've done a Japanese themed tree since we lived there for 6 years.  All of the ornaments are hand made and took FOREVER.  The skirt is this one from Pottery barn.  

The cranes are all made with 100 yen store(the Japenese dollar store!)  metallic origami paper.  Paper cranes are pretty easy to make:  Paper crane youtube how to

I love them.  Best thing is that if the baby steals one from the tree and crumples it then you can just smooth out the wrinkles.  I bet it cost about $1-2 for a whole trees worth of cranes.

The washi eggs were an inexpensive craft as well but took a really long time.  The year we moved to Japan I made about 6 or 7 dozen of them.  They are actually pretty hard to break because when you are done glueing the paper on you put lacquer on them a few times.  They have survived 6 years of 3 boys!

 

Some of the paper even has little paper cranes on it so perfect for my washi egg and crane tree.  You too can spend hours making Washi eggs: Washi egg tutorial

Our star is really small this year because we couldn't find the one we usually use.   Note to self:  Buy new star.

Our tree in our dining room is the family tree.  It has all the kids ornaments and everything bright and colorful.  Love.  

Some are from the regular store like this one that I've seen at Michael's.

The kids all have a picture ornament for every Christmas they've celebrated.  This is a great tradition because if Mom gets behind on the ornaments then it's really easy to buy a bunch of frame ornaments and get pictures from past years and play catch up.  NOT that I've ever had to do that.  Usually I just grab a bunch of frame ornaments on clearance at Kohl's after Christmas and stock up for a few years.

I bought a bunch of beautiful silver ornaments from a fun gift shop in Japan.  They were made all over asia.

Love.

This one is my favorite.

  Fun!  I am loving the white trees lately.  And the pink and teal trees but so far I've resisted.

Our little end table display.  The tree is a bizarre metal tree from Thailand and our little Asian Santa.

Some of our nativity scenes.  Notice that ALL the stable animals have gone missing.

Not a lot of decorations throughout the house.  I set a big bowl of glass balls on the coffee table and within seconds realized that our toddler couldn't handle that sort of temptation just yet so it can be new for next year!  Hope you enjoyed the tour!