Weekly Pinterest Project: Felt Christmas Tree

Forest started sleeping through the night 2 days before his 1^st Christmas. Suffice to say, by the time I had the energy to even think about putting up a Christmas tree, it was way too late to put forth the effort. 

First Christmas in Aberdeen at the Mahan's house

His second Christmas was spent at my parents’ house and this Christmas will be spent in Louisiana as well, so basically since he’s been born we just haven’t bothered decorating much. Since he’s 2 this year, he’s a lot more aware of holidays and can get involved in the magic. I definitely wanted him to have some sort of ‘christmas tree’ decorating experience and when I saw this idea for a felt Christmas tree on Pinterest I thought it was absolutely perfect for a toddler! 

SOURCE

I was slightly intimidated to try it because I would in no way label myself a crafty mom, but all the tutorials I read swore it was easy and could be kept as simple as I wanted it to be.  I decided to go for it. Jonathan was out of town the weekend before Thanksgiving so I figured that was the perfect time to get my craft on. I went to Hobby Lobby to stock up on supplies which included: 

*1 yard of green felt (I actually got 1.5 yards and it was way too much/too tall for my freakishly tall 24 month old)

*A mini-hot glue gun

*Double sided Tape
*A few Squares of colored or patterned felt (I also bought little felt reindeer too)

*A sharp pair of scissors

*(And of course a bottle of red wine and a couple of episodes of girly TV are also a must for any crafting project I undertake.) 

I started out by folding the green felt in half and free handed a tree pattern in chalk. 

You could just do a triangle to keep it simple. I probably should have, if you'll notice my several attempts at free handing in chalk. I then used fabric scissors to cut out the pattern and voila I had my tree. 

According to my Pinterest sources, felt sticks to felt so all I did for the ornaments was to trace circles (I used a water glass for the shape) on my colored/patterned felt and presto! They stuck just like Pinterest said they would. 

If you want to get fancy, you can add gifts at the bottom or special decorations to each individual ornament in which case you will need a hot glue gun to make the felt stick that well. I tried my hand at embellished ornaments and quickly learned that I should leave that sort of creativity to the pros. I did make a star out of yellow felt to add a special touch to the tree, but like I said, you can really keep it as simple or make it as intricate as you want to based on your skill level and how long your toddler does or doesn’t nap….

You can tell by the simplicity of mine that we’ve hit a rough patch on the napping front. 

But because it was so easy, I also decided to make a little snowman with my extra felt. 

I am a firm believer that any and all Christmas evidence should be hidden until after Thanksgiving so on Black Friday I applied double sided tape to the back of my Christmas Tree and Snowman and hung them onto the walls of Forest’s play room. 

We had a little time to decorate and then we all cozied up to watch Frozen. 

Such a cuddle bug during movie time.

I love starting new traditions with Forest! Maybe next year we will have a real tree to decorate but either way I think the felt tree will be around next Christmas as well!