Putting up the Christmas Tree

Yes, it's that time again. You'd think with 11 months notice I could be farther along. For years we put up our tree on the weekend of my birthday (the 9th), but after all these years I realized that I was cheating myself of time to have a little more fun eating birthday cake and shopping. So this year we started on Thanksgiving weekend.

We STILL have this old tree from my mother in law, and I REALLY don't like it. The tree I want costs nearly $500 so until it is on sale 90% off, I will be using this one. First Ron puts up the bare bones of the tree:


Then we go outside and trim the blue spruce in the back yard and bring in a pile of branches which I tuck in the ugly old tree to give it some Christmas smell and liveliness.







After that the lights and multiple garlands go on. This year's theme is red and white. All the ornaments are, duh, red and white, and the ribbon garland is candy cane striped. Then there's a wire garland that's wild and shiny and it's topped off by my 40 year old red ring garland made from throw away rings I picked up at Ralston Purina when I was working there in the shipping division.

Next comes the ornaments. This year Zach, age 6 and Zoey, alias Bat Girl, age 3, are my helpers. Zach seemed overly concerned about glass ornaments breaking. I assured him that as long as he wasn't throwing them around, that sometimes they do break but it's okay. Guess who broke an ornament? Yea, me!





It's nearly finished. Ron brings in the train and houses and then it's time to plug it in and step back to adjust branches and perhaps a few ornaments! The only thing we forgot to do this year is turn on the music to The Nutcracker. I don't know how I missed that one important tradition we've been doing for years and years.



The last thing that gets done here before putting the extras away is to hang a wreath from the light fixture over the table. All the ornaments on it are ones I managed to save from my childhood. This is my favorite decoration in the whole house.