I made a Christmas tree today!

Two years ago, Ryan and I bought our first Christmas tree. It was five feet tall and pretty nice. We were able to get it at DI for really cheap. But, now, in this new apartment, we don't really have room to put up a tree, seeing how we have two couches, a loveseat, and an arm chair in our  living room. So, we gave our tree to a neighbor who was needing one and today I made a tree that was of a more manageable size for our living room... two feet tall.

 This is something I learned how to do from a sister in my Clearfield home ward. All you need are six wire hangers, a string of lights about 25 ft long or less, garland of any sort or color, and a glue gun with glue. First, you glue the six hangers together in the shape of a Christmas tree, to make the frame. Use plenty of glue.

 

 Then, you wrap the lights around the frame, gluing as you go. This takes a while, because you don't want to go to fast. At the end you want to leave a couple feet loose so your tree can reach an outlet if it's not close by.

 Then, you can wrap your garland around the tree, gluing every now and again, but only two or three times with each time around. Make sure the lights can poke through.

 

It took about an hour to make and when I was done with the garland, I put a golden flower on top and I was done. It makes for a really nice little tree to put in a kids room or on the front porch, or in this case a crowded living room. :P

Jared loved it! He really wanted to play with it, so I had to find a good spot where he could see it, but not reach it. So, I put in on the table by the front door in the living room. It turned out okay and I'm glad we have some sort of tree, but it's kind of sad not to be having a big one this year. Hopefully our plans can work out of us being gone most of Christmas break and we can enjoy other peoples trees. ;D

Our Little Lumberjack

For Jared's Halloween costume this year we searched around until we found this toy axe that could go with his lumberjack costume. We finally found it at Toys "R" Us, but it came in this "log splitting kit," which included the axe and a log that you could split. When we got home, Ryan and I tried it and it was kind of fun, but it didn't seem like a toy that could be fun for very long. Little did I know how much fun Jared would have with it those next couple days. He's been having a ball with it. He saw Ryan and I do it so he caught on pretty well. He just whacks and whacks and whacks 'til the log splits, and he gets so excited when it does. It's very cute! :)

Halloween Fun

Last month, we did a few fun Halloween things. This was my and Ryan's fourth Halloween together and our second with Jared. We decorated and have been trying to start some family traditions. This year we had a Halloween dinner with Halloween jello jiggles and veggie burgers. Veggie burgers were definitely scary for Ryan, but he's a good husband and ate them anyway. ;) We made frosted sugar cookies and took them to neighbors and friends.

ghost, cat, half moon, bat, pumpkin, witch head

We had our ward trunk-or-treat on Halloween. We wore our Christmas tree shirts and were Christmas trees. We got Jared some clothes from Di and an axe from a toy store and dressed him up as a lumberjack. He looked really cute. We used some of my brown eye liner to give him a little beard. It was a pot luck, so I made an apple pie with a ghost on it and brought that.

 There were a lot of little girls at the truck-or-treat, most of them were princesses. Jared had fun watching them and wasn't too interested in his dinner. Once I let him down he squealed at a girl he saw and then started following her around. It was really funny. Everyone thought Jared was Paul Bunyan, so we went with it. Ryan took Jared around to do some truck-or-treating while I passed out candy. Ryan says Jared was really good about taking the candy from their hands all by himself. Before heading home we asked a sister in our ward if we could take our picture in front of the huge spider on her car. Jared was a little distracted by it.

At home, Jared had fun pulling out all his candy. He didn't care too greatly for anything in particular until he saw the sucker. He loves suckers! Ryan helped him open it and he got pretty sticky enjoying it. So, we gave him a bath before laying him in bed. I think he had a pretty fun day. :)