Light of the World

Hello Arizona Russum readers! I’m Veronica and I blog over at Passion, Pink and Pearls where mostly I write about the daily blessings the Lord grants me, aka everyday life. I’ve always admired Jen’s sweet writing, and I’ve felt so refreshed after many of her posts. I’m so honored to be a guest post for her today.

With the Christmas season upon us, Jen asked for some Christmas appropriate posts. What better Christmasy post than one about the tree? A quick history lesson for you, did you know long ago people decorated their trees with items you’d eat like fruit? It wasn’t until the 18th century till the tree started to have lights, by candle. The earliest record of a tree is back the Renaissance area in Germany, where children would gather to snatch a sweet treat from the tree. There’s a lot more interesting facts you can read about here.

Well this craft was originally brought to you by Hayseed Home Makin‘ blog, but I discovered it where else{?} but pinterest. I thought it was be a sweet, fairly simple and inexpensive way to dress up our first Christmas tree. Especially since we don’t have many ornaments.

Mallory Jane, did a pretty good explanation of her process but I edited it a bit for our use.

Supplies:
-Christmas lights (2packages of 100 count it what we used), the green colored strand if you’re going to use it for a tree.
– 2 yards of Tulle, any kind will work, I chose a white one with a bit of sparkle ( hope onto JoAnn’s and snag a coupon before you hit the store to make it extra inexpensive).
-scissors, preferably sewing scissors to make your cuts smoother.

Definitely enlist help!

How To:
– Mallory cut big pieces because she used them as decor on their own…I cut smaller squares. I ended up with about 8cm squares (centimeters happened because I accidentally read the wrong side of the ruler when measuring and cutting…oops…it turned out great at this size though). I’d recommend maybe cutting a little bigger squares. Cut up a ton of squares but don’t use all the fabric up.
– Grab someone to help ( I snagged my husband), snap on a Christmas movie (we chose Home Alone) and get to tying. We tied one by every light bulb.
-Once you get all the way through the strand put it on the tree!
-You’ll likely have some squares left, we used those extras to fill in on the strand where the tree looks a little sparse.
-Finally, if you chose to leave enough out, use the last big of tulle to tie a big bow for the top of the tree. There’s lots of tutorials on line for tulle bows, I kind of looked at a few and made up my own.

Pearls:
– Note: unless you’re super anal about it, you won’t have every square be perfectly square and all the same size…and that’s okay.
-Mallory put some lace in with one of her tutorials. That would look pretty too, I imagine there’s all kinds of variations you do on this.
-Have some fun…oh and take some better pictures than me! 😉

That’s it! Not too hard really, and we love the final product! Since it’s our first Christmas, we don’t have many ornaments so this was a perfect solution to try and fill up our tree without having to hit up Walmart for tons of colored balls. Hope you enjoyed this simply DIY and click on over to my blog for some more Christmas DIY. Many thanks to Jen for letting me take over her sweet blog today and good luck on your packing!