Christmas Tree {A Family Affair}

Every year we kick off the Christmas season by putting up our Christmas tree the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It is one of those traditions that has carried over from my childhood.  We put on Christmas music, my hubby makes Chex Mix and we put up the tree.  Last year our little guy was only a few months old and would just lay there starring at our tree, this year he wanted to be involved.  I swear he thinks he is an adult!

Both my husband and I would receive ornaments every year growing up, and we still do.  These ornaments mean a lot to both of us, so we have a family tree that receives all of those ornaments.  I was suppose to have another tree, but that's another story for another time ;)  Since we want to keep these ornaments up as well as start the same tradition with our children we have attempted to achieve some sort of cohesiveness.  I must say that I think we do a pretty decent job at it since I have had people over that tell me they could never have a tree like this because they have so many personal ornaments.  I'm not sure if it is a compliment to our efforts, or a compliment to the ornaments we have received over the years.  Since a lot of our personal ornaments are traditional Christmas colors {red, green, gold, etc} we went with a red and silver accent color.  After stringing on all of the lights we put up red garland, then an assortment of red and silver ball ornaments.  Finally we finish off by putting up all of our personal ornaments, those deemed less attractive get designated to the back of the tree ;)  My mom gave us a larger tree last year, so we probably need to get some more filler ornaments to give it more color, but here it is...

It is too funny, we both have ornaments from 1988 with our pictures on them.  So we put them together on our tree.  My grandma made mine, as she did all of her grandchildren.  Every year we would look for what ornament she would make us, they would all be similar but different.  Here are just a few examples of some of her work.

This was the very first ornament!

We had to put the tree in our dining room so the little guy would be less tempted to disturb it.  At least it allows for you to see it from the front of our house :)  Do any of you keep a "family" tree?