Rustic Homemade Christmas Tree

Decorating the tree in my childhood consisted of playing the entire family collection of Christmas music (starting with Mannheim Steamroller and skipping that weird music box CD that one of our realtors gave us once) and hanging the large collection of ornaments on our artificial tree that went through a basement flood before it was ever used the first time. We would pile the ornaments on the parts that were easiest to reach until my Dad would point out that the tree was leaning into the room, and then we would all get behind the tree and put a bunch more on there until the lean was more inwards than outwards. The logic was if it fell over, it would hit the wall as opposed to a person.

Now that we have mostly left home, my Mom has 2 trees, one for her ice and snow ornaments that she has been collecting for just such a purpose since my adolescence, and one for a lesser number of the same ornaments we used to pile on there.

I fully anticipate that my future trees will be much the same as they were for me growing up. I suppose that I will probably have to wait until much later in life before I have a catalog perfect tree. Today was my sort of attempt, however. I couldn't spend much money on it, and I don't expect to keep the tree this way (for one thing I am sure to have a lot less ornaments on the bottom once David gets up from a nap). In fact I had to talk my husband into getting it out of storage early just so I could do this, but it was fun and smells heavenly.

Everything hanging from the tree can be made with the following materials:

• Red, Green, and Beige Rafia
• Apples
• Oranges
• Baking Soda
• Cornstarch
• Spool of Plaid Ribbon
• Cloves
• Nutmeg
• Cinnamon
• Cinnamon Sticks
• Applesauce
• White Glue
• Hot Glue
• Water

The ornaments are mostly simple, but stay tuned for a few posts relating to the specifics of them. I had fun making them and David had some fun helping, though I think 2 years old is a little young for really helping with many of these. He did manage some grand messes, though.

The ornaments:

Baking Soda and Cornstarch Dough 

Snowflake Ornaments

Dried Fruit Slice Christmas Ornaments