Christmas is my favourite holiday and on the 1st December, without fail, I put up the Christmas Tree.  I have a wee ritual of eating mince pies and watching a Christmas Movie, normally Love Actually but this time I opted for the Holiday and I also snuck in Elf as well.  Hubby normally goes out while the Christmas Tree goes up.

I have an eclectic mix of decorations that I have either made myself or collected on my travels. We do have a fake Christmas Tree as I suffer from hayfever and struggle with a real one in the house.  I thought I would share some of my homemade decorations with you.

A few years ago, we visited Germany in December with the sole purpose of attending the Christmas Markets.  I fell in love with the lights, the noise, the crowds, the food, the smells, the Gluhwein, the lebkuchen, everything!  Every Christmas I wish I was back there so when we got home, I made some decorations to remind us of our holiday.  I cut shapes out of MDF and glued pages from an atlas to each one showing where we went on our trip, drilled a hole and threaded some ribbon through for hanging.

I also picked up some souvenir decorations on our travels

I tried to learn pottery and managed to make some passable pots and also took the opportunity to make some Christmas Decorations as well.  I used cookie cutters to get the shapes and stamps for the patterns and after they had been fired, I painted them with poster paints.  I am particularly proud of my bikini wearing gingerbread lady and she always has pride of place on my tree

I couldn’t leave out the knitting and crochet so knitted Christmas Trees made using scraps and embellished with buttons and bits and crochet baubles which have stuffed rounds made from calico inside them.

And a wee bit of recycling and repurposing has snuck in as well.  We have a friend with a pine tree in his back yard that has the cutest wee pine cones.  I gathered up a bunch and painted them with gold glitter paint and added some fishing line to hang them.  They add a nice bit of sparkle to the tree

And jigsaw puzzle stars.  The centres are cardboard circles with the jigsaw puzzle bits glued in between them.  These were quite fiddly to paint so if I made them again, I would spray paint the jigsaw bits before I assembled them.  From memory I think they have about 6 coats of paint and glitter on them

And no tree would be complete without some stockings, made from felt and blanket stitched together with a wee bit of stuffing inside

They are all packed away for the year now but I hope you have enjoyed a wander through my Christmas Tree and are feeling a bit inspired to make some of your own decorations