Family Heirloom Christmas Craft

Growing up, my mother always had the most unique Christmas decorations.  One year, a friend of hers made us a Christmas Tree out of children's alphabet blocks.  The base of the tree spelled out our last name and both mine and my brother's names were spelled on the sides.  She then tucked little ornaments, ribbons, and other goodies all over the "tree".  I loved this decoration and when I had my own family I knew that I wanted to make one for us.  Here are a few pictures of the original tree.

In order to reproduce the tree I counted the blocks along the bottom.  Our last name was long so it filled up most of the bottom row.  My married last name is much shorter, so I added the year along the bottom of ours as well.  I found the blocks for $4.99 at Tuesday Morning and I went to both Hobby Lobby and Michael's for the small ornaments that I wanted to use as embellishments. Most of those were half off, so the whole thing was around $10.00.   I laid out the blocks to make sure I had all of the letters I would need.  I arranged and rearranged the blocks until I had them the way that I wanted.  Then I glued them using a hot glue gun.  Once all of the blocks were glued in place, I used the little ornaments and ribbons to fill in the blank spots.  I was really happy with the way it turned out and my girls loved having their names on it!  

Addison (our nine year old)

Foshee (our last name)

Avery (our 15 year old)

 This was a lot of fun to make and it looks really great as
 center piece for a small table.  Send me pictures of the ones that
you make.  I'd love to see them!  Hope you enjoyed!