Well, its that time of year and that means I have been busy decorating our house for Christmas. I LOVE Christmas. I love everything about it. I love that we are celebrating Jesus' birthday. I love watching people be blessed with gifts, I love looking at the lights both indoors and out, and I love it when we actually get snow, thus making it a truly 'white Christmas'. I grew up getting a real tree every year as a kid and thought artificial trees were disgusting ("what!? its not real?!"). So when Dan and I moved to Vegas we continued the tradition. I recall my mom only spending about $20 a tree in Michigan. Not too bad I suppose, and I guess the price is dictated by the environment, because unfortunately, when we moved to Vegas where Christmas trees just aren't really in abundance, they were much more expensive. It was shocking to pay $80-100 every year for a tree out there. But of course my hubby did, because his wife wanted a big beautiful tree (not some scrawny, sick-looking thing). However, over the years I have to admit I started to not enjoy the hassle of climbing under it to water it, and finding the right stand that will actually make it stand STRAIGHT (not lopsided), and all the pine needles that would fall off and I would continue to find in crevasses in our house way into spring time. So... after we moved into our house here, I went out and bought myself a 9 1/2 foot, big, beautiful, full, and HUGE artificial tree. I loved it. It was perfect every year (no holes or gaps due to nature, right?). The only problem that has arisen is that when purchasing it I made the mistake of not buying a pre-lit one, so each year I had to re-do the lights. Not my most favorite part. (By the way if you haven't noticed already from this post and previous ones, I do ALL the Christmas stuff at our house:lights, decorating, trees, outdoors, you-name-it-I-do-it). So last year, when setting up this tree I decided to try to make my life easier for years to come, so I strung each branch of this tree with lights and made sure the strands didn't cross the connection sites of the trunk, so I can take it apart and store it with the lights on now, thus solving the problem of buying an unlit tree :)
Well, anyway, back to my story, Christmas is here, so I have been busy decorating the trees. Yes, I said treeS. Not one, not two, but seven.
Yes, I said seven.
Now you may think this strange and a bit overkill. One might ask "how many trees do you really need?" In fact I used to think that when I heard of people who had more than one or two. However, I love them, and do not mind setting them up. I love to look at them, and am actually even thinking of buying one more to put in the kid's playroom so that I can see it in the morning from my treadmill while working out (some morning sunshine before the sun comes up!). But of course I won't buy it till the after-Christmas sales, so if I do buy it, I won't have it up till NEXT year ;) I used to have one of these in this picture in my bedroom and I liked that, the glow in the evening while laying in bed before falling asleep, so beautiful. So I may either move one into our bedroom again next year, or get another one for that room too. My only problem with buying more trees is that I have to store them all year long. And even though I do have quite a bit of good storage space, you can never have enough, and I don't want to run out of space because I accumulate too many trees! Clutter drives me nuts, so they have to be able to be stored in an organized manner or I won't do it. (Keep laughing Ashley, I know you are! and to you I say "whatever!")
So, here are the pictures of our trees this year. Each year, each tree has a theme. Some trees keep the same theme every year, but some trees get a new look every year. This first picture is actually of a tree that is making its grand entrance this year. I bought it last year (after Christmas) specifically for this spot because it is a "slim" tree, so it makes it easier to walk past it to our bedroom from the living room. Its 7.5 ft tall I think, and pre-lit with colors (yea!) It has like 500 bulbs so it is VERY bright. Brighter than any of the other trees in fact. This year on this tree I went with a multi-color theme of turquoise, lime, hot pink, plus regular reds, golds, blues, greens. This tree is unique in the fact that besides the bulbs, all the other ornaments are picture ornaments. Mostly of our girls, but also of my beloved dog Alexus, and my not-so-beloved dog Lucy. Also, on this tree is the first ornament T ever made. Its a paper penguin with a penguin sticker on it (not sure how that transpired, but she made it, so I love and cherish it!) :)
There is that penguin ornament right in the center, near the bottom, see it?(Its big and white)
Above is a close up, where u can see Alexus front and center in the silver heart frame. Lucy is down below on the left in the red doghouse. If you look closely the girls are ALL OVER the rest of the tree ;)
This is tree #2 and it sits on the other side of the fireplace (these two flank the fireplace in the living room downstairs). It has white and green lights. Several years ago (actually about 8! wow time flies!) I picked up about 200 pinecones that had fallen off a tree down the street from us. I cleaned them, painted them gold and laquered the death out of them to make sure there were no bugs living in them. I tied gold ribbons to them and used them on my main tree that year. They have been in storage ever since then because I haven't been in the mood for a "gold pine cone tree" lately. However, this was the year :) I pulled them out again, and used them on our staircase(again) as well as on this smaller tree. There are gold bulbs, and gold beads as well on this tree.
Of course, the pictures never do them justice. They are so much prettier in real life, but I hope you get the idea and enjoy my little Christmas tour of our decorations this year. There is more to come, so stay tuned ;)
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