If you let your kids hang ornaments on the tree...

Do you secretly move the ornaments if they put them in really weird places? Amy & Sarah seem to think that if a certain branch is a good place to put one ornament, it's a good place to put a whole bunch of them. :laughing: I redistributed them today -- just a little, but so they're not all on that one branch. I also moved some of the glass balls that were so close together, they were bumping up against each other in a little clump.

In a similar vein, do you decorate the side of the tree that faces the wall? (My mom was fanatical about insisting that the tree be decorated all the way around, which seems silly to me now -- who's going to see that side?)

Do you use all the ornaments just because you have them? I've been sticking some of them (the ones we bought at Costco when we were first married, that I never especially liked) back in the box, but then I wonder why I don't just give them away. Do I expect to have a 10-ft tree someday and really need all these ornaments?

 

I do move the ornaments once they hang them, because they all hang them in one spot..the bottom.

I don't hang all the ornaments we have, I will take out what I want to hang, and leave the rest in the crate. I also keep all the ornaments I have, because I never know what mood I'll be in and some years I have switched up which ornaments I use. For example, I have a ton of Hallmark ornaments but hate to have to take them in and out of the box, so this was the first year I have put them up in a long time.

I do put a few in the back of the tree, but usually its just the plain balls, the pretty ones I hang where people can see them. Plus I have garland, so it goes all the way around so it doesn't

 

I did move a few of the ornaments since they were all seemed to be in one spot at the bottom of the tree. Otherwise, while we were putting the ornaments on I told them to hang them somewhere else and gave them an idea of where to hang them. :good: But the bottom of our tree is decorated more than the top. :lol:


Yes, I do decorate the side of the tree that is beside the wall (well in our case the window). I like ornaments around the whole tree. :good:


I use most of the ornaments we have. There are a few I don't use anymore since the kids get an ornament every year and DH gets me one every year, so that is 4 new ornaments every year we put on. Most of the ones I don't use anymore are ones that my students gave me when I was teaching.

 

My girls don't help decorate yet, but I imagine I'll end up moving some when they do. You could make it a "teaching moment" to try to explain that you want ornaments spread out all over the tree, but likely you'll still have to move some.

We decorate all around the tree, but our tree is always in a window, so all sides can be seen (either from outside or from inside).

I don't use all our ornaments. I do need to weed some out, but right now, they are just in a box.

 

Mine have lg plastic candy canes (attractive ones!), and they don't need hooks. I don't rearrange them, because it's okay if the bottom branches have weird candy canes, since I do the rest of the tree. My tree is big, though. It's 58 inches in diameter, so that reduces the impact.

 

I actually spend a few minutes every evening redistributing the ornaments. I've told them that we are finished decorating the tree, but everyday when I get home from work they are all clustered at my 5 year olds hieght again. :snowball:

 

We have a cute little miniature tree for our 2 cats, Scootch and DJ. The kids enjoyed putting the miniature 'cats' ornaments on the tree. Also, Daddy put the hook on the ornaments and then they both pass it to me while I can put it on our big tree. We do allow to give them some ornaments that they can put on the bottom of the tree. We tell them to hang it over there and that place.

 

Nadia will ask me, "Where should I put this one, Mom?" while we're decorating, so I don't have to relocate hers too much. Occasionally I'll tell her, hey, let's move this here, so we don't have two red ones close together, or whatever.

K&K don't help decorate yet. Or rather, they haven't been given a chance yet, as our tree is sitting there bare because the window contractors are still tearing up our living room. I like Ruby's idea about the candy canes, and maybe will just let them hang those this year. I imagine they'll all be at the bottom, though. :laughing: (They are really tall, but it IS a 10-foot tree!)

I got these great pics of DH with Nadia on his shoulders last year, so she could put ornaments up high...but then he pulled a muscle putting her down, so I don't think he'll be doing that again this year, LOL.

Oh, and yes, we do decorate all the way around -- but, our tree is in front of a bow window, so you can see it from the back yard.

We don't use all of our ornaments -- we have a bunch of things that we bought at Kmart when we first got married, but I'm nostalgic about them, so I can't get rid of them just yet. However, this year we might skip putting up the nice glass ones, and actually use the Kmart ones -- it's a set of small wooden toys -- because the kids can't really break them. (And I'm sure Kevan will be climbing the tree.)

 

We just gently guided them to good places to put them. I only had to move a couple. If they ended up clustered, I'd just say something like, "Let's spread them out guys. We don't want all the ornaments in the same place," and they'd be fine with moving them. Plus, we put our tree in the finished basement and the ceiling is so low that we had to buy a really short tree. So, they can reach about half-way up already!

We also decorate all the way around, but it is mostly because our cheapo fake tree isn't the fullest there is. So, you actually can kind of see the ornaments on the back and I figure that's better than seeing the wall through the tree! We only put the balls back there, though. All the pretty ornaments go in front.

We don't use all of our ornaments, but we do use all the non-ball ones. We don't really have a lot. When DH and I got married, we bought a bunch of balls really cheap at Big Lots. Every year we only add about 2 or 3 good ornaments and we've only been married 4 years, so our collection of nice ornaments is very small! I get a Hallmark ornament for DH every year and I get one at our church ladies' retreat, but that is about it. Starting this week the kids and I will be making ornaments in school (homeschool) though!

 

This is our first year having the girls help decorate the tree. Cricket put seventeen ornaments on one branch, all lined up one right after the other. The branch is the bottom one - about ten inches off the floor at the back of the tree. She had to crawl in to put ornaments on, but had a blast doing it. I really want to move all of the ornaments, but she was so proud of her work that I think I'll let them stay. We have enough other ornaments that I was able to cover the rest of the tree nicely.

As for old and yukky ornaments, I get rid of them. DH has some old ornaments from his family that I don't really like, but they're sentimental, so I keep those and try to hide them near the back. He's probably secretly doing the same with some of my old sentimental ones too. =)

Edited to add: We actually inherited an entire tree-full of ornaments when DH's mother died several years ago. She and I did not have similar ornament tastes, so I have boxes full of pearl bead strings, silky pink heart ornaments, and lacy doily thingies that I refuse to put on our tree. Fortunately, DH agrees that they're not really "us".

 

I wasn't secretive or subtle about it. I let them go nuts and told them I'd decorate the part they couldn't reach. When a branch would get cluttered, I'd move some ornaments up saying that the top of the tree needed those more than that branch. There were no protests; it's simply not the kind of thing they take personally.

 

I tried to move some of the ornaments that Meara put on the tree, but the next day she called me out on it! "Mommy, why is the gingerbread man there? I put him over by the couch!" And then she moved it back I don't mind though. I used to be fanatical about *my* tree (Dh is not involved as I'm a control freak), but I'm being more zen about how the tree looks like year.

 

The girls noticed that I moved some of "their" ornaments, but they didn't really complain. I just pointed out that the one branch at the bottom where they had hung 8 ornaments was starting to sag, and if it sagged too much, all the ornaments would slide off. That seemed to convince them.

We do have a lot of paired-up ornaments -- Sarah was insistent that all of the ornaments they've been given for Christmas so far should go together. So one branch has two teddy bears, another branch has two little felt hearts, another has two jigsaw animals, etc. I thought that was cute, so I left it. :wub:

DH doesn't get to decorate the tree at all. :lol: He doesn't care, though.