The day after Thanksgiving we head out to find the "perfect" family tree! Now, perfect is relative cuz I could tell you some crazy stories about trees past!
Unfortunately, where we live there is no place to just head out in the woods and find a Christmas tree, so we head to a tree farm to find it!
We usually walk around for a couple of hours going from tree to tree declaring each tree's perfection until we see the next one. Then about two hours into it my back hurts and everyone is getting a little dizzy from all of the trees so we just pick one and begin cutting!
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| Christmas tree cutting this year!! 2013 |
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| Tree cutting from 2011!! |
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| Tree cutting 2010!! |
We load it up and carry it home, set it up in the living room and allow a day for all of the branches to settle, or all the insects to wake up from their slumber!
Then the following day is probably one of my top five most favoritest days of the year....tree decorating!! The Friday night before we decorate the tree, we spend time decorating the house and Farmer Willie puts the lights on the tree so then once Saturday comes....BAM, we decorate!!
It is a decorating party!! We have a spread of finger foods, always have some chips and queso, red and green M&M's and Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. There is usually some fruit and raw veggies with dip thrown in there too. And finally......Christmas punch!!!
After we spend time eating and visiting we begin decorating!! We usually put up three trees. The main on in our living room we cover with ornaments that we make. This year it is mostly cinnamon ornaments and boy does our living room smell good! (I will show you how to make them tomorrow!)
The other tree, usually in the dining room, we hang our yearly ornaments. Each year one of the girls and I will go and pick out a special ornament for each person. Sometimes we have a theme and other years we get ornaments based on things that each person was interested in throughout the year. We label them with the year and the name. We started this about ten years ago and the plan is that when the girls leave home they will be able to take their special ornaments with them to hang on their trees!!
We also hang our travel ornaments on this tree as well. Each time we travel to a new destination we try and pick up a Christmas ornament as a souvenir!!
You can imagine how much fun this tree is to decorate!! It brings back tons of memories and fun stories!!!
The final tree is really just there because we love Christmas trees! This year it is decorated in red and white and is in our library.
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| You will note the cat at the bottom, Aslan, thinks he is the best gift of all! |
We keep the lights on the trees going as long as we are awake! I love the mood that it sets in the house!!
We don't really do presents, so under the main tree we have our Christmas books, under the red and white tree we have some homemade gifts for each other and we don't put anything under the memory/travel tree.
So....what traditions do you have with your Christmas trees??!!
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