our bishop lives on a big chunk of land just south of idaho falls. and he has a ton of trees on it.

so he invited our ward out there for a tasty dinner and to cut down a christmas tree.

what a cute idea, huh?!

unfortunately, we had bought the lamest tree EVER from walmart the day before we found out about the activity.

not joking, it is the lamest tree!

we planned on getting a real tree but they were all way too big for our little abode.

so we decided to buy a cheap fake one.

but the cheap one we wanted was sold out... so we got a cheap-er one!

[no time to shop around when you are potty training]

oh well, chet just thinks it is awfully special to have a tree in our house.

and matt and i are just hoping that this is our last 'poor student christmas' :)

we have had a blast decorating our nasty little tree.

almost everything on it is homemade. i like it.

we made popcorn strings, paper chains, we painted pinecones, made pompoms, and made these melted-bead ornaments that i found on pinterest.

oh, and the star is cut from a piece of yellow felt, and stuck on with packing tape.

classy!

but, really, who sees the back of your tree? umm.. no one.

the part that i really struggle with is letting chet pile all the ornaments in the same place at the bottom of the tree.

but he puts so much thought into where he carefully places them, so i am dealing with it!

this is going to be a fun christmas season - chet is excited about everything.

he likes listening to matt and i butcher christmas carols.

he is very good at spotting snowmen, reindeer, and baby Jesus.

and he thinks christmas lights are fascinating.

a clump of ornaments, thanks to chet!

 i thought this pinterest idea was cute... and it worked!

i deserved to have a pinterest success... i have had waaay too many fails.

i invited a girl over to make snow globes that i saw on pinterest.

and it was honestly the most horrible craft party ever!

everything just went so wrong.

i had bought jars, miniature trees, and glitter.

but, we quickly found out that the we had glitter didn't sink
(an important trait if it is going to be in water).

so we go to porters to find new glitter. and a lady that worked there spent a ridiculous amount of time testing all sorts of glitters in water.

finally, we found one that sunk.

so we go home and start assembling things.

we glue the trees to the lid of the jar and fill the jar with glitter and water.

then we put on the lid and start shaking.

success!

....oh...no... the green from the tree is leaking into the water.

now we have nasty green colored water. no good.

we try emptying the water several times, hoping that the trees stop leaking. but they never did.

so my friend had the idea to put a little bit of bleach in the water to cancel out the green.

and i fell for it!

so... we put bleach in the water.

the water did stay clear, but slowly our trees started to turn the nasty yellow color that over-bleached hair turns.

oh dear.

and, by this point, i have already "sealed" my jar with super glue, so i couldn't start over.

but it wasn't actually sealed. it was leaky.
so i had a bleach-blonde tree in a snow globe that is leaking bleachy water.

needless to say, it ended up in the trash.

oh, and THEN we realized that the snow globes we were trying to copy didn't even have water in them!

haha really??

if we hadn't had so much fun laughing at each other, it might have been considered a waste of life.

i really wish i took a picture of my snow globe, but i didn't think to at the time.

this is what it was supposed to look like:

and this was the inspiration for our bead ornaments: