Christmas Tree of Memories

This last week, I have been in a real 'funk'. Not impressed with life at all, and I think at the heart of it, was my angst over not having our Christmas tree up yet (I know, first world problems!) We had chosen our tree last weekend, but as we didn't have a towbar, or access to a ute, we were unable to get the tree to our house - and I didn't really want to part with the $75 it would have cost to have it delivered (only $5 less than the tree........)


Thankfully, this was all rectified on Friday and our tree was delivered and positioned in its rightful place in our living room.


As I have mentioned many times, I am not an organised person. Nothing I do would be classed as 'put together'. I dream of having a house with decor that matches, but this is unlikely to happen. Our Christmas tree decorations reflect this. But when I was putting them up today and telling Master Z about what I was doing, I realised that they are a reflection of our lives so far.


Each of the decorations is embedded with a memory-


Our first trip to Prague:

Apologies for overuse of filters - could not get the light right on any of these photos

From my sister-in-law when we went to Edinburgh with her and my brother:

A present from Disneyland from a special friend:

My favourite Van Gogh painting:

From a cute little shop down a cobbled street in London:

From our Bratislava trip with 3 wonderful friends:

From Lhasa, in Tibet - our 3 week trek to Everest Base Camp, where TBone proposed:

To celebrate Master Z's first Christmas:

A representation of our little family from a dear friend:

The one time I asked TBone to choose something and this is what he came back with - it looks nicotine stained and pretty creepy - I try to put it at the back of the tree.....

And they all go together to form this higgledy, piggledy tree, that we love. They don't need to match, they don't need to follow a theme. They represent our life so far and tell a story of our journey to where we are now.

What does your tree look like? Do you go for a colour theme? 


Just found this to link up to - check out other trees.

Chantel x

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