Christmas Tree to Valentine's Tree (Decoration, Activity and Cheap!)

Disclaimer: If you are looking for sophisticated home decor, this is not it. 😆

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For Christmas this year we had a beautiful "real" tree in the front window, decorated with plastic balls and foam ornaments the kids made, tied with a ribbon. No glass, hooks or sentimental keepsake ornaments. I have 3 boys under 6 and wood flooring.

For a few years I have been trying to find ways to display my special ornaments out of reach from my little dragons. But that usually means its also somewhat out of sight.

This December, I had a Eureka moment. A tree in my bedroom. Everything about this idea was marvelous. A glowing tree with all my favorite ornaments that I can see from my comfortable bed while I watch Christmas movies. My kids aren't supposed to rough house in my room and even if they do (which they will) there is carpet in there! But alas, Christmas is so expensive. Another thing to buy...and then I saw it. A 6ft artificial tree on Walmart.com for $22. It really improved my mood for the 5 or 6 weeks it was up.

When January came, I wasn't ready to take down the tree. I mean who likes putting away the Christmas decor? Dragon 1 in particular really gets bummed out when Christmas is over. When I was talking to him one night about it, he asked me how I keep from being sad when fun times are over. Of course I told him I look forward to new things. Besides playing with their new toys, there aren't any big exciting things for my kids until Valentine's Day. (Sometimes Monster Jam comes around this time but you know, coronavirus. I highly recommend the hot wheels/monster truck drive thru if its in your area though! We did that last month.)

So, why not prepare for the holiday and change our new ever-lasting tree to a Valentine's Tree!

Here's how I did it inexpensively (after all it was just Christmas) and made it into a fun project for the kids.

1. I kept the topper I had on it.

2. I bought a valentines garland from Joanns on a free shipping day for $3.49. (TIP: Its half the price at party city. just didn't want to make a trip out there or spend $39 for shipping at the time, and I should have bought 2)

3. I also bought 2 sets of plastic heart ornaments https://amzn.to/2NfLF4X https://amzn.to/2XNJJ5N

4. The kids made ornaments from a Target valentines craft. ($5)

Any other year I probably would have hit up the dollar tree for some extra embellishments but my 3 little dragons were perfectly happy with these decorations.

**Update, throughout February, the kids added Valentine's art they made and Valentine's they received. See the difference in the before and after a trees?

Also, our little one has his own felt tree. I made a felt tree for Dragon 1 and Dragon 2 when they were toddlers, but this year I bought one from Amazon. Check out the link here https://amzn.to/3oTPtXf

I easily changed that to a Valentines Tree by buying some felt hearts also from Amazon https://amzn.to/2XNJJ5N. We left a few ornaments we felt were Valentinesy. (I did not get autocorrected when I wrote that word. Is it actually a real word? Weird.) Anyway, its not super creative but just a little something extra to bring the holiday into the playroom and our one year old dragon still loves to decorate and re decorate it.

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