Deck the Halls with boughs of artificial holly...

Fa la la la la la la la la...

I love my fake Christmas trees. We used to get real ones when we were little, complete with the trips to the random farm or high school parking lot and picking out a tree that wouldn't die on us in 2-3 weeks. Then came the Christmas of 1986 (I think) when we had a stowaway on the tree of the rodent persuasion. Mr. Mouse met his untimely demise on Christmas Eve and that was the beginning of the end of the real trees in our family.

Fast forward to the mid 1990's when I remember being in high school, vacuuming up pine needles from the carpet in our living room, vowing to never have real trees in my house. Yeah, you miss that great pine-y scent when you open your door, but I will say that there is some definite appeal in just setting up your tree in less than 5 minutes, without any hacksaws, tree stands or stowaway mice involved. I actually had a coworker whose tree rolled off the roof of their car in the middle of a busy intersection. Not worth the stress to me. Besides, I have allergies, so the pine scent loses its appeal if I have to be popping a Zyrtec every time I sit in my living room.

I got a little craft happy this weekend and broke out the golden spray paint to bling out some pinecones that I had prepped last weekend. Anything is better in gold.


While I was feeling so crafty, I put up my Christmas trees (yes, trees plural - stay tuned). I will say that this is partly mostly because I am a complete decorating dork this year, partly because I didn't want to get cheated out of the good decorations this year (like we did last year), and because the next three weekends I am either out of town or on call for work or having Christmas parties out the wazoo.

I actually did three big projects today. First, I made an Advent calendar with some friends from church. Then, I did the Christmas tree for the Kid's bedroom and the main one in the living room. We definitely got an "oh wow!" moment from her. Unfortunately, she was more interested in the ornament hooks than the actual tree, but at least I had an excuse to buy pink ornaments (yeah, no pink coat, but she picked out the pink ornaments herself). Go figure.


Above is the Kid's tree in her room. I just need to figure out what to do for the tree skirt and topper and we are all set. Maybe some pink tulle and an old fashioned foil wrapped star (taking it back, old school style).

More pictures of the Advent calendar and other tree to come...