I'm sure you know by now that we love our traditions in our house.
Especially those that involve Christmas.
Traditionally we wait until the second weekend in December before putting up our tree. This year that worked out particularly well as James was home from Stornoway for the weekend and so he could also help us out. He has a smiliar OCD attention to detail when it comes to adding the lights as I do and so it's good to have his help!
Early on Saturday morning he and I went out to choose the tree, while everybody else was still at home in their jammies. James chose the tree for me, then we took it home and left it out on the back patio for the branches to settle down once out of the netting.
Saturday was a busy day, with me organising everything we needed for the Piano Recital I was hosting for my piano pupils to perform at that evening. I spent a large part of the afternoon baking mince pies, cupcakes and peppermint bark for the recital. We also had to get along to the Village Hall early enough to set everything up, so there was no time for decorating the tree in the afternoon.
The recital was a lovely event and I was so proud of how every one of my pupils performed. We started the evening with hot chocolate and home baking, then the performances followed on. I think I might even make it a new Christmas tradition
We were back home from the recital in enough time to have some of the evening left for decorating our tree.
Opening the decorations boxes is always so exciting and everybody loves to go through the box talking about their favourite decorations.
Fraser kept himself busy while we put the lights on the tree.
I say 'we', but what I really mean is 'James'. He put the lights on while I held up the roll of lights and followed him backwards and forwards holding them for him.
Lights and tinsel on, ready for the mismatched ornaments to be added.
These are a couple of new decorations that I made this year. A yellow one for Fraser and a blue one for Ally.
It gets more than a little messy once everything is in full swing!
Our tradition is that the youngest puts the star on the top of the tree, usually helped by the oldest these days.
Isn't it pretty?
Another of our December traditions is to have a little activity advent calendar. Every day contains a small activity, nothing too big as December is busy enough. Some of our activities have been/will be:
- write to Santa
- write out Christmas cards
- bake gingerbread men
- make paper chains
- a treasure hunt
- snowman pancake breakfast
- have supper under the tree
- Christmas Bingo
- Reindeer Game (like Beetle Drive)
- Christmas Movie Night (this one appears more than once!)
- Family Games Night
- Make marshmallow snowmen
- put up the tree
-go to the big boys' school concert
The treasure hunt is always just little random clues I make up and we hide around the house. The treasure is always some new Christmas jammies for the younger boys. The older boys tend not to wear jammies so there is no point in buying them some Christmas ones!
I thought I might think of a different prize this year but for a few weeks Ally had been saying that he really hoped we would do the treasure hunt this year and that the prize would be new jammies. So I stuck with the tradition that he loved.
We had the treasure hunt at the weekend. Fraser and Ally loved racing around the house solving the clues, and they loved their treasure when they found it.
Do you have any Christmas tree/advent traditions that you do every year? I'd love to hear what they are if you do!
