Our Christmas tree and some German traditions

Hello dear blogging friends, neighbors and readers,
I hope that you are all spending a joyful Christmas time with your families and friends!

Because in Germany we don't put our Christmas tree up before the day before Christmas Eve (I guess that you know that we are using real fir trees which are bred/nursed on tree farms, especially for becoming Christmas trees and if you buy and put it up too early in the warm house it would lose it's needles before the season is over) I couldn't show you any photos of our tree so far, but since two days the little one is up (my cottage is too small for a big tree and I have to bring it upstairs in our loft room, cause I have no space for a tree in our actually living room downstairs, no problem though seeing in winter we're spending most of the time, especially the long evenings upstairs anyway where the comfy couches, the tv, the pc and my studio corner are situated) and we're enjoying it's festive sight now:

The picture above is taken at night with the real candles lit (another German tradition is using real candles!) and below in daylight only with the few electrical lamps I have installed and the top star lit:

I did not find the time to show you some festive craftings I had finished during the last 2 weeks before Christmas and because Blogger is very generous to me today, concerning the upload of photos, I'd like to post them too. As you can see I loved playing with old music sheet papers and old german scrap pictures, because they bring me in the right Christmas mood. Click on the pictures to enlarge them and see more details:

(see Maria, I've used your gorgeous tiny pink heart for the collage above)

The next one is made out of a CD:

The paper wreath below actually is a paper Advent calendar which I have bought years ago, but I think it is still very pretty:

My daugther and I traditionally spend Christmas Eve (it's when Santa brings the presents in Germany) at my parents house (sometimes like this year also with one of my sisters and her husband joining us, so we have been 6 people for the Christmas Eve dinner and the "Bescherung" which is the German word for the "handing out of presents"). My mum is always organising it all and she is creating such a wonderful warm and festive atmosphere that my daughter would not want to spend Christmas Eve anywhere else. And oh my people I've got some wonderful Christmas presents which I'm going to show you in the next days, or so! Today we are going to have Christmas dinner at my other sisters house with my parents coming over and we are celebrating with my nieces etc. and we'll be 10 persons, so we need a big table. Everyone is bringing some yummy food so that my little sis is not having to do all the work alone.

We'll that's ist for today, again I'm wishing all of my blogging friends and readers from all over the world a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays! xox