paper chain

Did you guys make one of these when you were kids? I'll bet you did! I know we did. Once at least, and I think my Mom still has that chain,even though it's at least 30 years old at this point (probably older). I KNOW that my Dad and brother regularly try to sneak "junk" like that from our childhood onto Mom and Dad's tree every year, just to drive Mom nuts. In fact, I'm going to try to take a photo series of some of the more memorable of those artifacts to share here this year.

Anyway, I decided that it would be a fun project for J to make a paper chain for our tree this year. And I wanted a bright and colorful project yesterday to prevent me from whining about this:

Yup, you guessed it, another storm! In this picture (of Annie, comfortably out in the elements sporting her new waterproof blanket -- Happy Holidays, Annie!) it was sleeting. But at various times it's been sleet, snow, and/or freezing rain, sometimes (when we were REALLY lucky) all three at once. It started somewhere around 3am on Sunday morning and finally was tapering off by bedtime that night. (Of course, today it is ridiculously cold and outrageously windy....) But rather than moan and groan yet again (you can read plenty of that sort of thing here and here), I decided that our tree decorating was a more blog-able topic.

J picked up on the technique and we quickly hammered out a nice long chain... (Truth be told, *I* did most of the chain-making, although J hung in there for awhile. Zoo Boy thought nibbling candy bits off the gingerbread house was a more worthwhile pursuit.)




...then we hung it on our cute little tree. Saturday night, before the disgusting weather began, The Map Man took the boys to the local fire department to buy a tree, and got a dandy -- short, narrow, flat on one side -- PERFECT for us! Especially at $10. When you're in a limited space, you go straight to the flag pole, which is where they put all the "defects". Nothin' better than a tree that'll make Charlie Brown proud!

Just look how nicely our chain dresses up our tree!



More decorations will be forthcoming as the week progresses!