Simply having a wonderful Christmas time...

I love, love, love Christmas time! It's so nice to hear "Merry Christmas" as I buy my Diet Dr. Pepper from Chick-fil-a, to see the consideration of shoppers at the mall (shocker, I know), and my favorite indicator that it is Christmas time is to see Santa at the mall. I'm convinced the real Santa is at Southpark this year. He is a dead ringer for Chris Kringle.

Anyway, this year the Newton family has increased the number of trees in the house. We have our real tree - the family one.

Next, we have Momma's "snow tree."

The third tree is my pink one (with all of my Crate and Barrel "day after Christmas sale" ornaments... can't wait for this year's sale!).

And the newest edition is the tree Momma made (with a little help from yours truly) for Papas this year.

Of course there's a story. Momma's snow tree has resided in our bonus room for the past few years. However, this year it is in the room off of our garage. Papas mentioned to Momma that he missed the tree being upstairs, and she had a brilliant idea! Rather than move the snow tree upstairs, she decided to make Papas a rustic, manly tree.

Momma and I stumbled on this great felt garland at Crate and Barrel

and the creation of dad's rustic tree kicked into high gear.

Eddie Ross (check out his design blog here) created a tree for Kathie Lee Gifford's home out of styrofoam balls and flannel shirts.

It looked like a fun craft so we decided those would be the ornaments we would make for dad's tree.

First, we went to Target to look for a tree, and we found one. Woo hoo! Then, Momma thought we should just pop by Walmart to see if they had a better one... and they did. Hooray! We also picked out our flannel fabric while at Walmart. Next, it was time to go buy styrofoam balls at Michael's. Oh but wait, they had an even BETTER tree here. Are you keeping track? We have THREE trees in our car by this point.

After we brought the tree home from Michael's, we set out to return the first two purchases. Once we FINALLY got home, Momma started cutting the strips of material for the ornaments. After a few hours of work (and numb fingers from pushing in a lot of straight pins), the tree was ready to be decorated. Momma also bought some pine cones to add to the rustic feel of the tree.

I have to admit, we are pretty pleased with the final product... and Papas seems to like it a lot too!

(and now the closeup)

Merry (almost) Christmas!! xoxo, E