Our Living Christmas Tree

This living Christmas tree is three years old now, I saved it from certain doom when there was work being carried out in our garden. My plans are to grow this as a bonsai. Apparently pine trees make great bonsai trees, so I'm going to give it a whirl!

our living Christmas tree is three years old

This tree still looks a bit scrawny of course, but so much better than last year. And the year before it was tiny! I'm hoping it will thicken out now I have researched how to prune pine bonsai trees. Hopefully I won't kill it!

Five dollar limit on gifts a Great Idea!

There are so many cute little gift ideas under $5, especially for babies and young children, there's no need for the gift giving ritual to be excessively expensive!

Our living Christmas tree enjoys it's second festive season

Now I'm a mum I'm making more of an effort with Christmas this year. Granted I could make more of an effort than I have, but this year I'm just warming up! Next year I'll be even more organised! Today I brought in our living Christmas tree and decorated it, it does look a little small, scrawny and sad, but not as much as last year! And next year, if all goes well, the Christmas tree should look better and bigger after a year of growth. I couldn't put much decoration on it at all, it started to lean over so much, so I could only put one small star on it, and the love heart garland I made last year.

All the gifts I'm giving this year, or should I say Thomas is giving this year, cost $5 or less. As much as I'm actually not that keen on Christmas, I don't want to be the mean spirited parent who makes my son miss out on something that is an undeniably big part of our culture. So Thomas is giving everyone a small gift this year, especially considering all the generous gifts he got from them when he was born! But I do wish others were not so extravagant with their gifts, because we can't afford to reciprocate. But there are so many cute things you can give for just $5 or less! Some ideas for this year include books and a toy car I found on special for the kids, gluten free chocolate biscuits for my coeliac brother and framed photos of Thomas for the grandparents. I prefer to buy children's books second hand from the charity stores, as they usually only cost 50c. Sometimes I can pay $2 for a second hand book, which is still a lot cheaper than most new ones, but I found some nice ones for $4 at the department store.

Its not hard, and when Thomas is older I hope to teach him some graciousness when it comes to gift giving, even if his mum is clearly lacking in that department!

Tiny Red Love Heart Garland

tiny red love heart garland

I made this tiny red love heart garland, thinking it would be a Christmas decoration, but we kind of skipped Christmas this year, so now it decorates David's computer!

For this garland, I simply made tiny love hearts in between 24 chains, using Suzetta's love heart pattern. It turned out to be trickier than I anticipated because the tiny hearts sometimes turned out bigger than the first one. I simply redid them until I got 6 about the same size.

our small living Christmas tree decorated with a tiny garland

We have a tiny Christmas tree that I thought this garland would look nice on, but because I ended up in hospital this Christmas we didn't get around to putting it up. Our Christmas tree is a small Norfolk Pine sapling I saved from our garden, it's about a year old.

Now this love heart garland is stuck to David's pc as a lucky love charm! We can think of it as an early Saint Valentine's Day decoration!