Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Tommy and I are headed to Vegas on Wednesday and will not be back until Monday. The following weekend we are headed to Clear Lake for "Christmas on the Lake." (Note: I think I am taking the "on the lake" too literal because it seems that the lake wont be frozen. I'll let you know). Anyway, telling you all of this is supposed to excuse the Takekawas from putting our tree up before Thanksgiving. We would have put it up today even if we were not going out of town.


Last year we used our 6 foot tree that we had at the townhouse previously. It looked ridiculous in the new house. I was going to buy a new tree last year after Christmas but then I found out my mom was throwing away her tree. Many of her lights did not work, and she did not have the patience to fix it. My mom's tree is beautiful so I was appalled that she was tossing it. I asked her if I could have it instead. It sat in our basement until Tommy lugged it up the stairs on Friday night.

I had a plan, and it was a good plan. (The original plan was to cut off all the old lights and replace with new strings of lights. When we plugged in and saw how many lights did work (about 3/4) we decided to alter the plan. We went to Home Depot and purchased a bunch of replacement lights. (We went back two more times because I forgot to do my math of what is 25% of 800 lights). We ran into a snafu in hour two. As we plugged  a new light in, the entire strand went out. My determined husband continued to work on the strand for an additional 2 hours dispute my frequent pleas to move back to my plan of stringing the section with new lights). We went to bed with not much done. We woke up this morning and continued our work. 

The next two sections did not give us too many problems, but Tommy kept insisting in making sure EACH and EVERY light was lit for the most perfect tree (and you thought I was obsessed with details?!) While he worked on these two strands that would not stay lit I managed to change out all the lights on the working strands. (As my mom noted about us: It sucks to be stubborn and cheap). Two Four hours later, here is the result:

 I would say it turned out pretty good! Because we had tree half the size previously, we do not really have enough ornaments to fill the tree. We went to Hobby Lobby and Sams Club to find more, but we didn't find anything that we loved. So this is the finished project. I am really glad that we worked hard to make this tree work because as we shopped at Hobby Lobby and Sam's, I could not believe how much these trees cost. Besides, who knows if we will go out to a tree farm next Christmas once BGT is here (I asked Tommy if that is a tradition he would want to start. He said "What's a tree farm?")

At Sam's and Hobby Lobby I did find this cute wrapping paper,

Tommy did not want me to buy the pink paper. He said it did not look like Christmas wrap. I reminded him that it said "Seasons Greetings" and "Happy Holidays." He said "But what if we have non-English speaking/reading people at our house." When he failed to name one person we knew that was non-English speaking or reading, I placed the paper in the cart.

Merry Christmas!! Happy Thanksgiving!!