Christmas light mystery and a Christmas craft

The Christmas Light Mystery

Notice that my almost 3 year old has a paci in her mouth. Yes, it is way past time to get rid of it. I have a short list of excuses on why. Nonetheless, we have set our own deadline for December 9th. Annette's third birthday. We will be rid of it. She knows it's coming. She's been warned. May this momma be tough enough to out-win the upcoming battles.

Now, notice the tree.

Isaac pulled the big Christmas tree out of storage on Sunday afternoon. My mom gave us this one a couple of years ago when she decided to put up a smaller tree in her own house. It is supposed to be pre-lit. But somehow, over the years, it has become un-pre-lit. Or more simply... not lit.

It's several years old. I should just buy a new one, or get a real live one. But to save money and re-use what we already have, we just keep using this one.

Which means I have to add my own lights, which I could handle. HOWEVER... last year I bought 4 sets of white lights to string on it, and something so bazaar happened. I checked the lights first to see if they would work. They all worked. Then, after stringing ALL 4 sets of the lights, each string of light stopped working at about the halfway mark! So, after all the stringing work, my tree was still only halfway lit. Talk about frustrating. So, last year, I just gave up and had a halfway lit tree. 

This year I bought new boxes of lights. I tested them to make sure they worked. About 20 minutes into stringing all 500+ lights IT DID IT AGAIN!!  Half of the lights on each strand went out. So frustrating. I told Isaac, I'm guessing it must be the outlet.  He says, "Sorry". Not sure he grasped my full frustration:)

 What could it be? Maybe too much power from our oldold house's electrical gadgets??? Absolutely weird light luck??

I don't know, but I'm hoping I can come up with a solution. I'm stuck with all these strands of lights that only half way work. I do not feel like buying anymore. I guess I could try the tree in a different location with a different outlet. 

 I refuse to hang the ornaments until the lights are up, so the tree is just sitting there, sad.... halfway lit.... and undecorated.

And a Christmas Craft

So yesterday, the kids and I made our own unfaulty Christmas trees using mini cupcake liners I had from a past baking project. I've seen lots of different versions of this idea on good ole Pinterest.

I folded the first few.

Annette figured out pretty quickly how to fold and glue them on her own.

I helped her arrange them. This was a good activity for us to talk about the words Biggest and Bigger. She called them the Daddy, Mommy, and Baby tree.

 She cut out the stems all on her own.

I let Charlie explore with the cupcake liners, but he lost interest and moved on to the markers pretty quickly.

Here are Annette's Cupcake Christmas trees!

I cut out the starts from foil and she glued those on to finish the project.

Perfectly imperfect.

I'm sure we will do this same project again this season, because it was so easy and less messy than most of my other project ideas.

Plus, I think it would look great with a variety of cupcake liners, but we only had the red this time.  We might add sequins or pom poms to the next version as well.

I'm hoping I'll have pictures of a non-paper, fully lit tree before my next post. Somehow, someway:)