Sometime before Christmas we made swedish gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. Here are some pictures of my little helpers. Maeve got in like a dirty shirt grabbing fingerfuls of dough to eat! In December, Maeve added the word, "cookie" to her vocabulary. 

This year, we invited a family with teenagers to decorate gingerbread houses with us and I think Holly giggled the entire time! Oh gosh, I can't imagine being in the phase of life where we are parents to teenagers, but I guess it's coming! We had lots of fun and our gingerbread house was stripped of all it's candy in less than a week!

This year's ornaments were nice and simple. I used up scraps of fabric from our favorite Christmas quilt and used this Scandinavian Fabric Stars Tutorial. Holly and Greta chose which strips of fabric they wanted to have used in their stars. I made a few extra. These little stars are a great little project!

Ah, decorating the tree. It's a total frenzy of excitement and urgency for our kids. Our tree is pretty simple with lots and lots of ornaments I've made over the years. That tradition is one of my favorites. Here are some pictures of my girls in front of our tree. And of Maeve wearing the tree skirt!

In 2016, we had major tree drama. I wanted to perfect tree and Conor and I fought about it and I cried and we ended up spending $90 and then the next day, Maeve was born. 

After that year, we decided that buying a $5 permit and cutting down our own tree was the way we should go. When we are cutting down a tree I care less about a perfect tree because you have to cut from a cluster and it's truly all about the experience. We went to Idaho last weekend with our besties and had the best time cutting down a tree. The snow was up to our knees and the forest was so beautiful! After chopping our trees down and hauling back to the car, we feasted on cinnamon buns, trail mix, oranges and cider until we couldn't feel our feet. I would choose this over a perfect tree every time!