Last week Ellie and I made a cardboard Christmas tree (no, it’s not a stupid holiday tree…it is and will always be a CHRISTMAS tree!) to go in her room on her dresser. I figured since she’s in the I’m going to climb on everything stage it would be much safer than a small artificial tree…and cheaper, too!

So we cut two Christmas tree shapes out of cardboard covered in green felt, slit one from the top to the middle, the other from the bottom to the middle, and taped them together to make a 3D tree.  I took some photos as we were crafting, but I have no earthly idea where my camera has disappeared to.  That tends to happen a lot these days, and I’ll probably find it hidden in the bottom of the toy box.

Anywho, we never got around to adding any decorations to the tree last week, so this morning I decided we’d do just that.  In my craft cabinet I found a stack of old Christmas cards I’d saved to use for something, so we cut out the ornaments, shapes, etc, on the cards, and Ellie glued them to her tree.  On the back of each ornament we wrote what we would like for Christmas.  My one ornament said “Zumba Fitness” (hey mama needs to do some zumba workouts to work off all the food I’ll be eating over the holidays!), and Ellie shouted out things like "kitty", "baby", and "cheese". What more can you expect from a 2 year old? lol! Then we made some garland out of a box of stale Honey Kix I was about to trash, and we put the tree on her dresser.

It didn’t take but about an hour for Ellie to prove me right on the whole this is safer thing.  I walked in the kitchen to get something to drink and came back to find her sitting in the floor with the the tree in her lap snacking on the string of Kix. She’d pushed her rocking chair to the dresser and climbed on up!  Next year she may be big enough for her own mini artificial tree in her room, but this year it is definitely not a good idea.