The tree and our traditions

It is less than a week until Christmas. We are so very excited here in the Pink household! We have now finished school and work and have been spending time watching Christmas movies, driving around at night to see the lights and having dance parties to Christmas songs!

December is always my my most month. Not just because of Christmas day but because of the whole build up. I like to make it as magical as I can for the girls. We have our activity advent calendar that i made them a few years ago and we do special traditions every year. Our very first Christmas activity is decorating the tree.

We have a large bay window in our house so we like to get a large real tree and, this year, we have worked with John Lewis to share their amazing tree's and decoration ranges! I picked the into the woods range to and selected an 8ft real tree and when the tree came, we all couldn't believe how amazing it was! It was our best tree yet and the girls were so excited to decorate it. The Chrstmas music was put on, I filled up the baskets with all our new decorations and let them decorate. I used to be very precise on how the tree should be decorated but I love to let the girls decorate it and then leave it. It makes it seem much more magical and cosy and they do an amazing job. They take it very seriously!

As well as putting up the tree, we have other traditions that we love to do every year which I hope we can carry on for many many years to come and we can do with the girl's children too!

-  We love to put on a shadow puppet show. Each year, I make up different paper puppets for the girls. Last year we had a little red riding hood show.

- We always make a gingerbread house. We are never really that good at making them and after a few years of really trying to make the houses ourselves, we now buy the kits which makes it easier for the girls to make. They always end up eating most of the sweets though!

- We go to the forest with a basket of decorations and find a lonely tree to decorate. This is my favourite activity and we are doing this at the weekend with our best friends! We take the decorations home again so we don't endanger the wildlife, but the girls love to find a tree each year to decorate.

- We go on forest walks and make teepees.

- We visit a little Christmas tree farm next to the village where i grew up. It is next to the windmill and the girls like to just walk through and look at the tree's. We don't pick one from here but the smell is amazing and i just love being there.

- Writing letters to Father Christmas on their typewriters :)

Do you have any traditions? I would love to hear about them.

(This post is in collaboration with John Lewis. All opinions are my own)