Most people either put up a fake Christmas Tree, or buy or cut down a real tree. Last year, Joe and I decided to do something a little different. We drew a tree with our kiddos. It turned out to be pretty fun, and we decided to do this every year and make our own family tradition. We get lots of scribbles now with little ones helping out, but I’m sure in the future we’ll get some pretty nice-looking trees as their art skills improve!
This year my mom sent us The Shepherd’s Treasure. It’s similar to Elf on the Shelf, but it’s something that’s meant to help us turn our thoughts to Christ’s birth! There’s a little shepherd (we’ve named ours Sheppy, that’s how little Z says ‘shepherd’), who – during the nights leading up to Christmas – searches for baby Jesus. On Christmas morning, he finds him! In addition, we’re trying to find ways to use him that will help point us toward Christ even more, and we’ve got an idea that we’re working on that we’ll share with you in a later post 🙂
So, the day we did the tree my kids woke up and went downstairs to find Sheppy the Shepherd with all the materials needed to make the tree. They got pretty excited to find out we’d be making the tree that morning. I told them that Daddy would be home soon, and we’d make the tree when he was ready. They did a good job of waiting patiently, passing the time playing with their train tracks.
We laid out the paper, G cut it off the roll, and Daddy drew an outline to start us off. Then the craziness began. 🙂 I was pretty much on baby patrol making sure he didn’t eat the crayons or rip the paper, and eventually shaded most of the tree green. G had such fun making lights and ornaments; at the end he even made a big one that said “good job” in it. Daddy made the purple garland and some pretty cool ornaments! Most of the time K didn’t really want to help color, but he had a fun time sitting on Daddy! Z had a good time making his marks on the paper. 🙂
Artificial or real tree? How about home-made! Making memories with fun Christmas traditions! Click To TweetWhat Christmas traditions does your family have? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!