What was I thinking???

For those of you that know me well, you know that in the past I have been a bit of a Christmas scrooge. I get really set in my routines and I don't like 'messing up' the house by bringing in a tree, and putting all of these decorations up. But....I have gotten a lot better once the boys were born. It is so much fun for them and for Matthew and Kathryn so I have relaxed quite a bit. In fact, I even let Mike put the blow-up Snowman (well, lady, I think) and her two kids in our front yard! (I'll try to post pictures of that soon) I even went so far as to put in the boys' Christmas lullaby CD in the beginning of November. I know, I know....you are about to faint with shock. So, you might be even MORE surprised when you read on and find that I bought a little tiny tree that I am going to take to work. Not only that, I spent the evening decorating it. What is wrong with me?!? I am feeling the Christmas Spirit!!!

Here is Tyler, posing with my little tree. Which, by the way, will be planted on the side of my house come December 26th and may look something like an arborvitae.
I started off easy. Dressing up the bottom with ribbons.

Then I decided that I wanted to make some sort of rope decoration. I thought of popping popcorn and spray-painting the corn red, but the tree is so tiny that I thought the popcorn might overpower it. That, and I didn't have any red spray paint.

So, I got out the froot loops. I made a beautiful red and green froot loop necklack-type thing, but it was way too big for the tree. So I gave the string to the boys. Which they ate. Sort of.

They actually made quite a mess. Froot loops were all over the house. And look where else.

Yes, in the air vent. Lovely. So, back to square one. Beads. I raided Kathryn's room and separated out all of the white, red, and green beads from her stack. Tomorrow she will put all of the beads on some fishing string and we'll drape it around the tree. See how helpful the boys are with separating out the beads? (yah right, you should've seen the mess)

So I decided in the meantime to go with ribbon to dress it up. Here is my semi-finished project. I even got a green felt cloth to set it on when it goes to my desk.

I will post the final picture soon.