O Christmas Tree

Today at Internet Cafe Devotions it's the Christmas tour of homes...in other words, showing off our Christmas decorations!

Now, for starters, you really should pop over here and see this fabulous tree setup. It made me giggle, and giggles are good. ☺

So, if you missed the story about how we got our tree, you really should click over and read it. It's very exciting (and involves me being both Burly and Alaskan!)

We live in extremely rural Alaska (for a clearer understanding of what I mean by 'rural' you should read this or this). All our Christmas stuff is in boxes in my in laws garage 2000 miles away. Last year we spent Christmas with my family, so we didn't need any of our stuff...and this year it just wasn't high enough on the priority list to bring it. So we're having a very homemade Christmas! I did order a couple of strings of twinkle lights, but we've been without a mail plane for a week now, and so the lights have not arrived. So we have just our tree:

(Remember the grand question of how to stand it up without a stand? Enter big bucket with some rocks!) (The presents are in the box for now...it keeps the kiddos and the doggie out of them)

Our trees here have to survive Alaskan winters, so they are pretty sparce as far as branches go. Our tree happened to be growing right next to another one, so it's flat. I'm not joking, here is a side view:
Our tree has homemade strings of popcorn and cranberries (actually craisins); oranges sliced, sprinkled with cloves, then dehydrated in the oven (they smell SO good); and woven paper danish baskets (I made a tutorial about them here). That's it. We do have a paper advent chain next to the tree where we tear off one loop each day...but that's it for the decor this year. Keepin it simple. ☺

Even though I can't really show them to you, I do want to share about a tradition we have for ornaments (I mentioned it in my traditions post)
1--each member of the family has a personalized ornament. Those of you who know me know that I have lost three babies to miscarriage--I have an angel ornament for each of them. All our ornaments are different--mine I have had since childhood, Hubby's is a little viking, Wolf has an angel with his birthstone on it, Bear has (what else) a bear! We also have a crystal heart with "our first christmas" that we were given as a wedding gift--our wedding was a mere 5 days before Christmas, so that worked out well. ☺
2--I am slowly collecting one ornament from each country where our ancestors are from. (I have been buying one each year.) To date I have:

• a wooden version of the woven heart baskets (Denmark)
• a straw goat (Sweden or Finland)
• a viking (Norway)
• delicate curled wood-shaving stars (Germany)
• a silver thistle snowflake (Scotland) (we got this just last year, so I actually have it here, and it is serving as our 'star' on top of the tree this year) ------>

I still need Finland/Sweden (whichever one I can find, then the goat will be for the other LOL!), Poland, France, and England...