O Christmas Branch

Our Christmas tree is quite literally a branch.

And I'm ok with that!

We're going to be out of town for Christmas and it just seemed wrong to buy a $40 tree that would die while we were gone. I looked on Craigslist for an artificial tree, but I never got an answer back from ads that were in my budget ($10 or less).

But it didn't seem like Christmas without a tree, and I wanted my boys (2 1/2 and 4 1/2) to have the fun of hanging ornaments this year.

So much to the quizzical inquiries of Mr. B4A, I did what any self-respecting, determined DIYer would do and made my own!

Ok, not really. God took care of the making and the wind took care of the felling; all the boys and I had to do was go out to the back yard and look around. We found the perfect branch and drug it into the garage to dry off.

The next day I stuck my branch in an old galvanized tub that I found in the barn a couple years ago. I threw in some logs to wedge the branch in place and make the tub stable (small children in my house!), then piled pine cones on top of the logs. Some are painted, some have glitter, some are plain.

I then wound white lights around the branches, and while I miss the green needles that hide the cords so well (I would have used white lights on a green cord on a real Christmas tree), it still looks pretty all lit up. In hindsight, I wish I had taken the time to lightly spray paint the branch white before bringing it into the house.

I let my boys decorate for awhile. Note the cluster of small ornaments? Yeah, that would be my 2-year-old's doing. My 4-year-old got as creative as he could, probably because I let him stand on the chair.

After the boys went to bed I strung more lights and made the decision to stick to white and silver snowflakes and icicles. There are a few random shiny things--stars and bells--because they were, well, shiny! I had wanted to hang blue ornaments, but it overpowered the small "tree". I have tons of red ornaments, but I'm just not ok with mixing pink and red in my decor (makes my house seem so fancy when I use that word!), and those $30-for-the-pair wingbacks are very pink and very much in need of a makeover--January maybe?

I, for one, am happy with how our Christmas stick turned out. My husband was pleasantly surprised with it too, and while it's not a real tree, it works for this year! 

I hope it's ok with you, but I'm hoping to keep posting Christmassy stuff until the new year. I'm behind with it all and have some fun posts from last year as well. Hope you'll stick around to see more crazy/unique/make-do-with-what-you've-got solutions!