expiration date 

after tree hunting for a few days, yesterday, we finally found one that fit within the budget and not too big for the house. aina was super excited with the tree. so today, we started the decoration…

we put the tree together and added some beads we bought from Spotlight. i didn’t know that fake christmas trees come with pine cones, but aina looooved those little things.

   

after the tree is up at the corner of the living room, we started making the tree decorations to hang. when i was little, my aunt and i made simple christmas tree decorations ourselves. the idea is to have aina make those. but she’s still too small, so we had to help her with the drawing, cutting and glueing.

we starts with the supplies:

• a stack of card paper, left-over from aina’s flash card that we made when she was 2 months old…
• black waterproof marker
• coloring pens
• a very thin red ribbon
• glue and scissors (not pictured)

so, first, fold the card paper in the middle, so we have it folded like a book. then ari starts to draw on one side. we drew many things like santa, snowman, christmas tree, bells, mistletoes, star… etc.

we then give the finished drawing to aina and let her color it. she’s not very good in coloring yet, and it keeps going off the line and all. but that’s okay… we’re planning to keep these kind of things as mementoes for later. so we think the imperfection is actually rather cute :)

after aina finishes coloring, i cut the drawing along with the folded paper underneath it. so, at the end, i have two pieces of the same shape. these two pieces will be glued together, back-to-back.

then, i cut the ribbon to about 20cm in length or enough to make a loop for hanging. smeare the glue on one side of the cut piece, then place the cut ribbon on the top of the piece in a loop form. after that, place the other cut piece on top before the glue dries. so now i can hang the snowman, christmas tree or whatever you make on the tree.

but since the other side of the hanging decoration is till empty, we give it back to ari to draw the mirror image of whatever on the other side.

and let aina color it as well…

then, we let her hang it on the tree. tonight, we only finished three ornaments… aina ran out of steam by the time we’re doing the fourth. so, we probably continue making it tomorrow and the next day.

next year, we probably will make the beads ourselves, too.

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ps: this entry hs also been rewritten and published as an article at The Urban Mama website.