Christmas Trees and "Ball Balls"

As my kids have got older, Christmas has become more about creating traditions and less about copious amounts of plastic.  For the first time in 15 years Father Christmas will not be visiting our house.  It is really quite sad and signals yet another change in our Christmas celebrations.  When the kids were small our tree was very much beauty in the eye of the beholder and less design orientated.  It was beautifully adorned in paper Santa's, trees made of ice block sticks and paper chains, all usually created at kindergarten.  While these treasures remain in our collection, the kids find these 'treasures' now rather embarrassing so our tree is gradually become more of a design piece.  I have collected some nice glass pieces as they have got older but there are 3 decorations that will always remain on my tree, these are the 3 babies first Christmas ornaments engraved with my children's names and their birth dates.

My children still like to try their hands at a little Christmas craft though and now their creations have beauty that is not necessarily in the eye of the beholder.  Last Saturday after reading one of my magazines they decided to make, as my 8 year old calls them, ball balls. So armed with a glue stick and some Christmas wrap they decorated the lounge light fitting.  They made a huge mess in the process but it was nice to see the cooperation from the biggest to the smallest.

Another tradition in our house has always been the advent calendar.  It started when my daughter was really small, more as a means of showing her how many sleeps until Santa comes but has been passed down to the younger two children as well.  We have a rule that once the children go to high school they would no longer participate in the advent calendar so this year was to be the last year for my middle child.   My daughter decided that the cardboard mass produced advent calendar no longer cut it for coolness so much to my husbands distress she entered the 'man cave' and created this wooden beauty.  It is a Christmas tree shape, complete with presents and each day has chocolates pinned to it. It is a little hard to see it's true form in this picture because it still has most of it's chocolates intact but as December wears on it's true form will be revealed.