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This holiday season, I’m most excited about making Christmas decorations with my Mum! I’m about to have two brand new nephews who will be celebrating their first Christmas and I’m excited to make them their very own ornaments to mark the occasion.
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My Mum is my go-to ClassBento date for everything, even though she lives in Canada! I haven’t seen her in two years because of COVID, and we both love Christmas, so holidays are especially tough. Normally, our Christmas traditions kick off in November at a big craft fair in Vancouver, but since I can’t be there, we’ll be doing our own crafting online through ClassBento’s virtual classes. I get the class and craft kit options and my Mum gets the class-only options and then grabs the list of supplies herself. Every year, we bake, we send cards, we even sing carols, but decorating the tree on December 1st is always my favourite family tradition.
At home, we cut down our own tree from a Christmas tree farm and make a day of it. We’re those people that listen to the 24/7 Christmas carol radio station in the car, so we do that for the hour-long drive to the farm. Then we’re off to find the biggest possible tree that might still fit in our living room. There’s hot apple cider and hot dogs with mustard to warm up and everyone gets a candy cane for the drive home. After another hour of radio carols, we slide our too-big tree off the roof of the car, through the house, and into its corner of the living room. We prop it up in our ancient tree stand and wiggle it around so the best side is facing out.
Depending on how much rain we’ve had that day (it’s raining for sure), we’ll let the tree dry out for a bit before we begin the transformation. You know those people who have colour themes for their holiday decor? We are not them. Our tree is more… autobiographical.
First up is lights. Not the tasteful warm white LEDs, but the red, blue, green, and yellow kind. We know we’ve got the right size tree when the entire thing is aglow with 80’s nostalgia. From there we unpack hundreds of decorations. Whatever doesn’t make its way onto the tree finds a home on the piano, fireplace, or any of the dining, coffee and side tables that occupy the living room. Most of our decorations have been collected over decades of family trips. A surfing Santa from our road trip to California, glass baubles we somehow kept intact while backpacking from London to Budapest, a mini Faberge egg from when we took my Grandma to New York – all of them come out of their paper towel wrappers and mandarin orange storage boxes and bring a cherished family memory to life. Also included in the mix are a few more “rustic” heirlooms. Random bits of green fabric with brass buttons that my brother and I sewed together with our late grandma, a popsicle stick snowman crafted by a mid-90’s Girl Guide, and a few tiny handmade toques (beanies) weave their way into the mix.
Since COVID began, we haven’t created any new ornaments. I’m hoping that by making our own decorations together this year at a DIY bauble class, we can add some new decorations to our tree and add another good memory to our family story – even if it is over Zoom!
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