I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a Type A kind of mom, especially when it comes to Christmas.
I prefer for our flocked living room tree to be undecorated because I love how it looks natural, but I didn’t want to let my need for perfect Christmas decor rob my kids of our tree decorating tradition.
Every year before this Christmas, we’d put up the tree together and hang ornaments together. My kids might also make homemade ornaments at school and want to put those too and I wasn’t having it, haha.
That’s why giving them their own Christmas tree to decorate without mommy interfering was the perfect solution for our family. Plus, I know I can’t be the only mom who cringes when our kids hang ornaments too closely, so you may want to do it too!
We put a non-lit 7.5-foot artificial Christmas tree in the boys’ playroom. This was not a new tree I went out to buy. It’s actually the first tree my husband and I bought several years ago so since it’s kind of sentimental I didn’t want to get rid of it, and “passing it down” to our kids felt perfect!
Once we got their tree up, I took the boys shopping at Walmart to pick out decorations. They grabbed ornaments, lights, and garland — all without my input.
Just because I am a perfectionist doesn’t mean I want to raise kids to be the same! I had a lot of fun watching them choose tree decorations without worrying about if any of them matched. But to my surprise, they stuck with traditional Christmas colors.
Once we returned home it was time to decorate.
The entire process didn’t take long at all! We put on Christmas music, I put cookies in the oven, sat back, and watched them decorate their playroom Christmas tree. It took exactly 300 lights and my husband helped them wrap each row.
My oldest son put a ton of red ornaments all in the same area and it took everything within me not to fix it, haha. I just kept reminding myself that this is their Christmas tree, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.
In fact, it turned out perfectly imperfect.!
I’m so proud of them, but most of all they were really proud of themselves! So it’s safe to say that this will be our new family Christmas tradition going forward.
I can’t wait to see the ornaments they’ll add to their tree next year. Of course, one day I will teach them how to decorate a tree properly, but for now, I’ll let them be kids.
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