Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Top Ten: Arvore de Natal (Christmas Tree)

Here are a few pictures of our Portuguese Christmas tree:

We put up our tree on Thanksgiving weekend. It cost us 13 euros at Aki, our local "Home Depot" type store. Even if we only use it one year, I figure it was worth it!

The boys enjoyed helping me decorate the tree. Stephen wanted to put all his cars on the branches!

Straw ornaments from IKEA

One of our souvenir ornaments from Lisbon. We made it from a small porcelain trolley car that we bought at a souvenir store downtown and a piece of twine.

Our homemade ornament project this year was ornaments made from metal bottle caps. Rusty and Alex collected metal bottle caps all over Morocco when we went there in October. After we got home, I washed them; then we picked out some of the best ones, Rusty punched holes in the caps, Alex glued the foil stars inside, I attached the twine for hanging, and voila -- bottle cap ornaments for the tree!

We made 16...

... and each one is different!

With some of the leftover bottle caps, I made this garland to go around the bottom branches of the tree.

Rusty's Christmas train is in storage in Nashville, awaiting shipment to Angola in the near future, but Spencer, one of Alex's toy trains was happy to serve as a replacement this year!

The finished tree... and hanging on the wall behind, our stockings, also from IKEA (love that store!).

More to come soon about how we celebrated the holidays in Portugal. Hope your Christmas was merry and bright!

1 comment:

  1. Love the tree, Laura. You all are so creative. Mom

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