Happy Homemade Christmas

I have been AWOL the last week due to the other half doing something(Goodness only knows what) with the computers. Unfortunately most of what I have been doing craft wise can't be shown yet, just in case certain people read it.
But what I do have to show you is some lovely Christmas stuff!
Firstly we have the tree...

This is the first time that I have ever had a "real" tree.  When we moved, everything from the cellar in the old house had to be dumped due to damp (we were not very impressed I can tell you!!). So this year we needed to buy a tree whatever happened.  I will admit it was my lovely husband's idea, so we all tootled off in the car to the garden centre and had a great day out choosing our tree and buying decorations, which again we had to start from scratch with! I can tell you transporting our 7 foot tree in our little car was an experience, but it got us all in the Christmas spirit and now the house smells lovely and Christmassy as well!
We do however have some lovely decorations on the tree courtesy of my gorgeous kids.  The salt dough decorations have been painted and glittered and hung on the tree:

I am really happy at the way these have turned out, and the kids had a ball making them.  I think the only thing I would do differently is to coat them with something, possibly a varnish, as the glitter tends to get everywhere! (If you like the look of these the recipe for the salt dough is here ) We let the kids decorate the tree, which was so much fun and more than makes up for the fact that everything is slightly wonky.  I am very much of the opinion that me and the hubby will have years to have things done neatly when the kids are grown up, yet we have limited time when the kids can be kids.  I love the fact that they decorated and made decorations.  It makes our Christmas Tree truly ours.
Also, thanks to friends and family the kids have also received Christmas craft packs resulting in these beauties:

The Christmas Tree's were from a good friend of mine, along with some colouring in boxes which I just need to glue together, and Rudolph is from Grandma.  She got both the kids a lovely books with lots of different things to put together. I'm saving the rest for the week before Christmas when my daughter's not at school, as I know that she will get bored within half a day of not being at school!
I have cross stitched decorations on the go, which should hopefully be up by the end of the week and only one more homemade present to make...probably....
I hope you are all having as lovely a time as we are, and that you are enjoying the Christmas season!