Christmas is probably my favorite holiday of all time. The food, the family, the gifts, and of course, the Christmas Tree! 

When I saw that Terri Steffes was hosting Christmas Trees on Parade this year at Christmas Tree Lane, I couldn’t resist joining. 

Unfortunately, my wrist issues mean that I likely won’t be putting up my own tree this year, BUT I have the blessing of having helped my mother decorate her tree! 

You guys are lucky, too, because her tree is much prettier than mine!

When I was younger, my mom always put up two Christmas trees, complete with a Christmas village under the tree with all of the glass ornaments. This served two purposes. It kept us kids out of the tree that had the breakable ornaments, and made it so that my mom could have a beautiful Christmas the way she wanted to. 

The other tree was filled with ornaments that we had created in school or made out of McDonald’s toys. This was what she called the kid’s tree, and that’s the one that I grew up decorating.

Now that my siblings and I are adults and mom has her own health issues that make it hard for her to put up two trees,  she only does one tree, with the pretty ornaments on it. 

As you can see, it’s a beautiful tree. Most of these ornaments are either handmade or from my parents’ or grandparent’s travels around the world, and they’re all beautiful. 

I’ve always loved our angel on the top of the tree. we have had her forever, but I never knew how long exactly we’d had it until I asked my mom. 

It turns out that our angel was originally a ballerina ornament, who fell off and broke her leg one day. My mom loved the ornament, so she used the tail of one of my older sister’s Little Mermaid toys and sewed a dress for her to make her our angel. I knew my mom was crafty, but I hadn’t realized that she had made three quarters of our Christmas angel.

The jester seen in this photo was purchased in Austria when my mom’s youngest sister was studying there, and brought back one for each of their nine children. 

If you’re looking to make decorating your Christmas tree easier, and more fun, label everything for yourself and pack the boxes back into the ones they came out of!

You should also play some Christmas carols to sing along to with the people helping you decorate! It makes everything more fun!

I highly recommend you check out the rest of the linkup to see other people’s fabulous trees and learn their stories! 

What is your favorite Christmas ornament and why? Tell me about it!