I spent yesterday cleaning the basement and putting up my Christmas Tree. Yes, my Christmas Tree is officially up. Nick wasn’t too happy about it. He thought maybe I wasn’t sure what month it was. I think he’s jealous ’cause he doesn’t have a Christmas Tree. My original intentions were to put it up on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is when I believe the Christmas season should start (vote in my new poll), but then I remembered we’d be in Belize in December, so that’s 10 days that we wouldn’t get to enjoy it, and since Christmas is on the 25th, that’s almost half of the month. Besides, we haven’t had a tree up for about four years, so I’m making up for lost time.
This tree is my first official fake tree. I’ve always liked real trees, they look and smell so… real. But they are also really pokey. And really messy (we’re still finding needles from four years ago). And really sappy. Which means I get really sappy. And the cat gets really sappy. Ears all stuck to the side of her head and such. I got this tree after Christmas last year. It was on clearance. I don’t remember exactly how much it was or what I bought it for, but I do remember it being quite the deal. It’s one of those pre-lit trees that are supposed to stay lit of a bulb burns out. It looks nice too.
It was also a pain in the ass to get. We went right after Christmas to buy it. I’ve always looked a few days after Christmas for good clearance trees, but it has always been pretty slim pickins. Nick told me to wait because the price would probably go down more, but I didn’t want them to sell out and have no tree, so I bought it anyway. Of course a few days later the price dropped again. It was enough of a difference that we wanted our money back. Since the tree was unopened they told us we could bring it back. Now, we told the customer service person that we wanted the difference credited to us, but she said we had to return and rebuy the tree. Ok, no big deal. So she did a return for the tree. We waited for her to ring it back up… it was customer service after all, this is where exchanges and price adjustments take place. Then she told us we needed to bring the tree back to the registers to buy it… but we couldn’t take the tree we just returned, which was in a cart right next to us. Oh no, that needed to stay with the returned merchandise. We had to walk to the back of the store and get another (exactly the same) tree and bring it up to the registers. I had half a mind to call the store (which I will not name here because it is my favorite store) and complain, but the whole fiasco took the fight right out of me.
Anyway, it’s a year later now and there were no bad memories as I unpacked my brand new tree and set it up. The thing is so bright it could light up the neighborhood. But it looks a little barren with the 6 or so ornaments I have on it. Last year I cleaned out all our Xmas stuff and donated most of it. The majority of it was hand me down things which really didn’t fit the decor or decade. No offense if you gave us your old Xmas stuff. It had it’s run and now it’s off to bigger and better places. Every year I look at fun new ornaments and think “how fun” and “how modern” but I’ve never bought any because we’ve never had a tree, and if we did have a tree, we also had boxes upon boxes of Xmas decorations, so buying new stuff was never justifiable. But now it is.
Last year I almost bought a fun and modern set of ornaments from Macy’s. Again, it was after Xmas and I was in the mall. On my way through Macy’s I saw a full set of tree trimmings, I believe the colors were turquoise, bright pink, lime, and purple. All sorts of fun looking bulbs. Their Xmas stuff was 30% off. I decided if I still wanted it on the way out I would buy it. But on the way out I couldn’t find it. I think I was in the MOA, so there were about 45 floors and 18 stairwells in the store. I remembered it was on a table by the glass of the stairwell. After looking for a half hour I realized they rearranged while I was out shopping, and I found the ornaments under one of the tables, I could see the outline of the box on the table cloth in the back. Yay!! 30% off… of $100??!? No way was I spending $70 on a box of ornaments. So this year I’ll be looking for full priced, yet cheaper ornaments.
I’ve always liked the look of the perfectly sterile, don’t touch me I’m on display, take a picture for the catalog, I belong in a model home tree. But that’s just unrealistic. For starters, I already have some ornaments that I like. A leapard print one, an american flag one, an inside-out painted one… there goes my perfectly sterile tree. Besides, then I’ll want a different color scheme and have to start all over which doesn’t sound fun. I guess I’ll just have to see what’s out there this year. I’ll report back on my findings.
Hmmm… maybe I should think about digging our tree out as well. We have a full sized pre-lit tree (however the back half of the bottom row only lit up the first year, never to lite again) and also a pre-lit 3 foot tree that we bought 2 years ago since there were a few years where the original never made it out from under the steps. We’ll probably just go with the 3 foot variety again this year.
As far as decor goes, I’m a big fan of the potpourri of random ornaments. When you see an ornament that rocks, who wants to pass because “it doesn’t go with the theme”. When nothing matches, everything does.
Ha ha, you were stuck with the spam. You must have said something that Akismet didn’t like.
Hmmm… potpourri of random ornaments, huh? You have shined a new light on the anatomy of a Christmas tree. I think I like it. I will try not to feel so mismatched.