The Battle of the Two Trees

Well, we had to do it again this year - two Christmas trees are in the house. One for me. One for Abby. Having had two trees for the last three years or so, I was ready for this probability after Christmas last year. When one of my favorite Christmas ornament shops in Old Folsom, Dorthea’s, closed after last Christmas, their display trees were all reduced to 50% and then 75% off. I scored a 3 ft half tree with lights and ribbons and garlands still on it for only 20 bucks. Woot! Once I got it home I just packed it up for next year, which is now! It was such a treat to unbox this bad boy and have a little present to myself to start this Christmas season off right.

Isn’t she lovely? The lights are LEDs and very bright. I reused the delicate little silver and gold garland and some of the ribbon that came with the tree. Almost everything else came from the garage sale mom had over summer. There are a ton of little white floral picks for wedding bouquets and such. I thought they made darling additions to my silver and white tree. Of course, I threw in some of our standard ornaments, mostly silver stars and a couple unique ornaments that fit the color scheme. I was very pleased with the end result.

 

I think by now, my commentary on the trees year after year has given you a very clear picture of my compulsive need to have a well ordered, color coordinated, “pretty” tree. I don’t know why! Now Abby, of course, wants to express her own creativity too. I can’t blame her. With all of our family art nights, she’s learned to expect her own blank canvases. I guess it’s only reasonable to give her her own blank Christmas tree – yeah, I know. It’s really not reasonable at all. What other 8 year old gets her own tree to decorate? So, she took ownership of the family tree.

Ok, so this year’s family tree was kinda awesome. We found a cheap lot right down the road. When we were ready to buy, there was the perfect break in the rain, so we didn’t get soaked. This year we also bought a tree that was shorter and still wrapped in the string it was shipped in. That’s right, we didn’t even cut it open to look at it. We just walked up, pointed to the tree and said “we’ll take it.” Lee easily hoisted it over his shoulder because it was just his height and still wrapped up. It took two seconds to tie it to the roof because we didn’t have far to go. Once the tree was home, we would typically “wash” it off or give it a good hose down outside. This time, we brought it straight in, no delaying. I mean, if we rinsed it off, we would need to wait days for it to dry since more rain was forecasted. So, we trimmed the bottom, stuck it in the stand and brought it straight inside. Once inside, we cut the bindings and watched our tree slowly unfold. It was kinda like another Christmas present. It was delightful seeing our tree for the first time already placed in its new home. The whole process took about an hour. Yes!

Oh, and we got a surprise visit from a ladybug that had hitched a ride in the tree.

Next, I put on the lights and Abby got to work decorating. After a brief argument over garland. She wanted to use a red garland that would only cover the top half of the tree. I said it would look bad. Lee pointed out that it wasn’t my tree and she could do whatever she wanted with this one. A good point really. I just don’t know why I’m so high strung about the trees looking nice. So then Lee suggested stringing popcorn on the tree as garland. Abby shouted yes as I shouted no! I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to sit down to make a popcorn garland, but it is extremely tedious. Ugh! That’s how I got roped (get it?!) into stringing together popcorn while Abby decorated her tree without my interference. Unfortunately, I ran out of thread and patience before I could make a long enough strand. So, in essence, the popcorn garland was about as long at the original red garland I griped about it. It only wrapped around the top half of the tree. Abby loved it though, so that’s all that matters.

 

Good thing too. Lee has been feeding Bailey popcorn. If the garland reached all the way down, that darn dog might have eaten off the bottom row thread and all!