Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas. We are not particularly religious, but Christmas has always been a time for family and friends. A time to all get together and eat so much food.

Now that Master Z is in our life, I want to make sure we keep our extended family at the heart of our Christmas celebrations, but I also want to start some new traditions for our little family of 3. Things that we can do together, to bond us and become part of our family story.

Living in England for seven years, we got used to our friends all having 'real' Christmas trees each year and that is something I wanted to keep up here. It is a bit of a different experience chopping down a tree in 40 degree heat, swatting millions of flies away, compared to trudging through snow in zero degrees to find that one tree. Regardless of the temperature, nothing beats that beautiful pine smell that seeps slowly through the house once the tree is up and for the past few years, that smell has meant 'Christmas' to me.

Last weekend, we took Master Z one of the Christmas tree farms that have popped up over the last few years in our Northern suburbs. 

Oh so cute in mini Blundstones!

They have such a great, customer friendly set up, where you are able to walk through the plantation looking for the 'one'. 

Unfortunately it wasn't marked by a light shining from the sky like the Griswold's tree was in 'Christmas Vacation', but we found one that suited our purposes. A nice, 7ft tree that was a great shape and had the right 'look'. You wouldn't believe how picky you get going along the rows - I mean really, surely they all look the same......

This year, I probably was a bit (OK, a lot) more excited than Master Z about the whole experience, but it is the beginning of what I hope will be one of the lasting traditions of our family.

What Christmas traditions do you have in your family?

Chantel x