The love of my life, on the other hand, has never NOT had a real tree. This being our first Christmas together, he was excited to kick off our fun old-fashioned Christmas by driving out to the country to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols. The Christmas Tree.
So, on a sunny, windy, chilly Saturday after Thanksgiving off we went to find our perfect tree.
We arrived at what the Real Tree Fans (or the RTF's) call a Christmas Tree Farm. It was amazing. There were at least a zillion trees, half the population of the tri-county area, and many dogs (I was unaware they where helpful in the choosing of a tree). Anyway, we were thankful that they gave us a map. We hiked through about 400 acres of heavily wooded forest up hill (both ways) for hours.
And then we saw it. Our tree.
The angels sang, we snapped a couple of photos and began the process of cutting it down and hauling it back down the hill. And naturally by we, I mean Justin cut it down and hauled it down the hill. He is my hero after all. He even had a saw so we didn't have to dig it out by the roots!
Once we had it down the hill, excess needles removed, sent through the Christmas Tree Shrink-Wrapper for transportation purposes, measured, weighed and paid for we headed home with our big green treasure.
Upon arriving home, the fun began. We bring the tree stand and a tape measure to the living room. Which is about the time Justin starts laughing. Apparently when you have a 9' ceiling, you should not have a 9'4" tree. And we're back to the sawing. (Thankfully none of the neighbors asked us where we were going to put a tree that size.) After a good deal of prep work (and sap) we get the tree upstairs to the living room and in the tree stand.
Do you think there's room for the angel? That's going to be tricky. At any rate, I give you...
Our first Christmas Tree! Little full... lot of sap.
Clearly we did potentially underestimate the size of our living room. The tree is huge. And then the decorating begins! I begged to use the old-fashioned big ceramic bulbs on the tree this year. Justin happily accommodated my request and painstakingly put 960 watts of fantastic lights on the tree (which only took a couple of hours). And for those keeping score at home, that's 8 strings of lights!
After a full day of fresh air and tree-searching-trimming-lighting we opted to decorate on Day 2 of the weekend. We combined all of our ornaments, which took about 5 hours to hang. Added candy canes, tinsel, the partridge, and a squirrel. Five hours later...
That there is a honey of a tree!
The first year of a Real Live Christmas Tree is a great success! It really has added to our enjoyment of the holidays :)
