O Tannenbaum

M and N have been begging to set up the tree since Halloween, so the day after Thanksgiving, we did, after sleeping in.  To nearly 8:00!  That's some kind of record here.  And NO, I did not go shopping on Black Friday.  There will likely be another blog post where I tell all about how I love online shopping (You are all pros at it but I'm light years behind the times - I just figured out how to work Spotify on the desktop dino so I can listen to Christmas music....instead of cleaning off the old CD's and changing them every 45 minutes!)

So setting up the tree went like this: get the Christmas music going (on Spotify of course) and Hubs lugs in all the boxes from the garage. The kids start going bananas unwrapping everything while he's setting it up and getting the darn pre-lit lights to actually light and I'm trying to keep them away from the fragile box and get them interested in the shatterproof ornaments box.

Once I found it, AAAGGGHHH!!!! Mater's broken!  So we had to stop everything and Gorilla Glue Flying Mater's parts back on...they were "in the shop" for the rest of the night drying.

C dives in for more decorations

M hangs something as high as he can to keep it from baby brother

 

 

 

N helps me with the garland

N reaches for the top

C got closest - I bet because he's the lightest!

When I was packing to move last January, I boxed up almost all of our fancy glass ornaments (except the most special ones) and donated them to a local charity.  We hadn't hung them in years, so they were just accidents waiting to happen and taking up precious moving truck space.  When we opened the boxes, I was surprised to see I'd done a pretty good job of only keeping shatterproof decorations.  Of course, that means our tree looks like plastic balls, a bunch of yarn and handmade decorations made in my  '80's Girl Scout troop, and the cute little Hallmark ornaments my mom gets for the kids every year.  And enough plastic garland for the top half. And now our new Bronner's owls and snowmen ornaments from last Sunday.  And a bunch of bows from my sister's wedding decorations.

Occasionally, I'll dream about having a "beautiful" tree - one that looks like it could stand in a Macy's display, but since I don't get out much or look at Pinterest anymore, I don't think about it. In fact, my mostly-lit, colorful, mismatched tree is more beautiful to me now than ever before.  With the exception of the plastic balls, every ornament is a memory of our lives, some even from 1977!  And now that I think of it, the plastic balls were purchased by my newlywed husband and I one year from Lowe's Christmas clearance...a memory of when we used to shop together...awe.

I just made the twins pose in front of the finished product so you can kind of see what I'm talking about. Here's the best of 3 takes:

So there you have it! Our eclectic, vintage, shatterproof, homemade, unique, owly, mostly lit Christmas Tree. It gets more beautiful every year.