Every year my family and I choose a theme for our Christmas. Sometimes we go all out, decorating and choosing gifts around that theme. Other years we'll just get an ornament to commemorate that year. This year we are having a hobbit Christmas. I think this is about the most fun I've had preparing for Christmas. From what I know of hobbits, they are simple folk, they love to stay close to home, they eat a lot, and the live in holes in the ground.
Decorations
We decorated with more natural things this year. We have a real tree which we strung with strings of cranberries and cinnamon sticks. We put pine cones everywhere. We hung garlands everywhere and the whole house smells like cedar. On the table, we put a white candle surrounded by a wreath of cranberries and of course more pine cones. We had two special visitors this year. A miniature Gandalf and Bilbo stand in respectful admiration by the nativity. We also put swords and plastic dragon miniatures on all the remaining surfaces.
Gift Wrap
We purchased wrapping paper in rustic neutral colors and interspersed them with packages wrapped in brown paper. I made bows for the gifts out of an old book. Then I made gift tags by tea staining printing paper. I then get the paper into pieces and stained the edges very 70's style. After burning, I rinsed each piece so that we wouldn't get ash on the gifts. Once they dried, I wrote a hobbit quote on each one in my best hobbit handwriting. Each member of the family took a which-lord-of-the-ring-character-are-you personality quiz, and we used those names to address the gifts.
Ornaments
I painted a ceramic ornament with a green hobbit door on one side and the following quote on the other side: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Advent Calendar
For the advent calendar, I didn't want to do gifts or candy. So for each day of December, I planned a riddle. Since there aren't enough riddles in the Hobbit to have one each day, I had to find a few extras from elsewhere. Then I found a 750 piece puzzle with a dragon on it. I divided the puzzle into 25 parts so we would open 30 pieces each day. On the back of the section of the puzzle I wrote the answer to that day's riddle.Each set of puzzle pieces and riddle went in a box wrapped in brown paper, commemorative of the gifts Gandalf brought. Then each package was marked with a date.
i don't want to reveal all the hobbit things I've planned for Christmas yet. So I will write a continue this later.
