Thomas the Tank Engine Ornaments and Ornament Storage

It's that time of year: time to take down the Christmas decorations. We actually only ended up putting up the tree and a couple random things this year, rather than all of our stuff, which was fine by me.  Most of my decorations are breakable, so I plan on saving those for when the kids are older anyways, since I have limited "can't reach" space.  The few things we did have out, the kids loved playing with, so I'm happy with that.

One tradition we had growing up was that my mom would give us kids each a new ornament each year on Christmas morning.  I loved that, and I love having all of those ornaments on my tree now, so I wanted to continue that tradition.  This year, obviously, I didn't make it by Christmas morning.  But I still wanted to grab these super easy toy ornaments before I packed up the tree!

Step 1: Find a toy that represents something your child loves.  In this case, at least in our house, that would be Thomas the Tank Engine.  We have a huge drawer of trains, and we have some duplicates, so I just "borrowed" some of the extras.

Step 2: String some ribbon through a hole or around a part of the toy to hang it from the tree.

That's it!  That was really quick, and I have no excuse for not finishing those before Christmas.  I put them in the boys' new ornament boxes.  These are the $0.97 plastic bins from Walmart.  They're nothing special, but they will work for quite a few years before they get too full.  Next year I might make some cardboard dividers so they look a little neater, but for this year, they're fine.

Besides, my ornament container is stuffed!  Next year I will have to invest in another bin (I have one similar to this one), hopefully from an after-Christmas clearance sale, since we don't take the tree down until January anyways.

Christmas time is now officially over in our house.  When do you normally take down your holiday decorations?