Family room Christmas mantel

Left side of Christmas mantel

Right side of Christmas mantel

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

Santa, Frosty and Frosty Jr.

Our advent calendar

Dining room

Entry

Living Room

 I hope each and every one of you have had a wonderous and joyous holiday season!

Welcome to our 2012 rustic,country Christmas tree.  

Some of the decorations are new.  Some are old.  Some are homemade and some are store-bought.  Some of them go with the theme and some, not so much.  But the one thing they all have in common is that they are all treasured. 

This little copper Christmas tree was a joint project of my husband’s and mine.  It is a simple and inexpensive project.  We bought 30 feet of copper wire for this project.  We had a scrap piece of copper pipe and a scrap piece of pine wood at home already. 

My husband beveled the scrap piece of wood and cut a hole in the center for the copper pipe.  I sanded it and stained it (Minwax Special Walnut).  He drilled holes in the copper pipe for me.  I threaded the wire through the drilled holes and wrapped the wire around the pipe.  I bent the wire as I went giving the hint of tree boughs.  Make sure that as you go up to make the boughs a little bit smaller each row.  The wire is easy to bend and work with.  It is forgiving too.  You can start over again if you don’t like the way your tree is looking (just don’t put too sharp a bend in the wire). 

The star was made by my husband.  He cut a small section of the pipe.  He then split it open with a hacksaw.  He pounded it flat and then cut the star shape with some aviation snips.  He used one of his chisels to add the detailing.  He attached it to the top of the tree with a little epoxy. 

Please stop by my husband’s blog to get his take on our project.  This is the last project of the season for me.  My next post will be a tour of our Christmas decorating to see how all of these projects have come together.  Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Holidays!

 Last year I found a cute little cowboy boot cookie cutter.  I didn’t find it in time to make Christmas cookies last year, so, I have been waiting and waiting to use it.  I finally got my chance last weekend.  I usually make quite a few batches of homemade gingerbread cookies each Christmas but I thought I’d make things easy for myself and buy ready-made gingerbread cookie dough to make my Christmas tree ornaments.

All I had to do for these Christmas tree ornaments was roll the dough out, cut the shapes, and bake them.  I baked them at 200 degrees for 20 minutes.  When I pulled them out of the oven, I used the tip of a chop stick to poke a hole in the top for the ribbon hanger.  (I tried making the holes before baking and they came out looking all wonky.  I forgot to poke holes in a batch before baking and hurried and did it before they cooled.  Perfect.)  I let them dry overnight and then sprayed them with a couple of coats of polyurethane.  When they were dry, I tied a bit of ribbon for hanging.  I bought a roll of green checked ribbon and a role of red checked ribbon to hang ornaments from the tree this year.  I wanted a way to hang my homemade ornaments and a way to tie in my old ornaments for our rustic, country Christmas.  Merry Christmas Everyone!