Tell Me About Your Christmas Tree!

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Gone with the Wind would be my guess.

Our tree is a fake pre-lit white tree. DH loathes real trees and he managed to break our green fake tree by throwing it in the basement rather than putting it back in the box. So a couple years ago we had to buy a new one and I decided if I was going to have to have a fake tree, I'd go fake and picked white.

I've been collecting ornaments since I was a kid. My mom collects them and she got me started.  I'm also a December baby so I've received them as gifts since the day I was born.  So there are 31 years worth of ornaments on my tree.

I rotate thru my ornaments because DH refuses to buy two trees.   Some always go on the tree, some one year and not the next. Others are stuck in the box until the kids are older/the dogs are dead because they are extremely fragile and not replaceable.

There is not a single ornament on my tree that looks like another. I personally don't like the matching coordinated Christmas trees, I like mine to tell a story.

[giramomma]

Dec 9, 2014 10:05:21 GMT -5 @singlemominmd said:

Dec 9, 2014 8:01:52 GMT -5 giramomma said:

what is GWTW?

Gone With the Wind. It's one of my favorite things of all time.

[Deleted]

Dec 9, 2014 10:19:10 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Dec 9, 2014 10:05:21 GMT -5 @singlemominmd said:

what is GWTW?

Gone With the Wind. It's one of my favorite things of all time.

can you share some of your ornaments?

and for those of you that need trees for additional ornaments, michaels has 4 ft pre lit trees.  my kids each have one for their personalized ornaments and I got one this year for my alma mater tree.  this lets me put all the other ornaments on the main tree.

[NancysSummerSip]

Two trees: a small tabletop bonsai that is real and will be planted outside and one of those while spiral metal and wire trees that comes with lights. We wrap more lights on it and hang ornaments we've collected in our travels.

Menorah is out and ready for Hanukkah, which begins next week. It's a brass candle-burning type, and it was my grandmother's.

[swasat]

We have a 7ft pre lit fake tree. DH and I are lazy. We take the tree out, set it up and let the kids loose on it. They decorate it as they want. Done

[midjd]

We have a 6' or 7' prelit fake tree from Kohl's -- I got it on Black Friday a few years ago. I think this is its fourth Christmas. I'm guessing by the time DD (and hopefully the cat) can be trusted with it, it will be time to retire it and get a better one. 

It lives upstairs in the little alcove at the top of the stairs. I like it there because you can see it as soon as you walk in the front door (without cluttering up the main living space) and the baby gate at the foot of the stairs keeps DD and the cat away.

[Deleted]

am I the only one whose cats never bothered the christmas tree (other than laying under it)?

[Deleted]

Our cat eats the tree then pukes...eats, then pukes...rinse and repeat for the 4 or 5 weeks the tree is up. 

[t-dog]

I got a kick out of seeing my sister's Hanukah bush all lit up and decorated. Yep, the Jewish part of the family has a Christmas tree disguised as a bush.

[Deleted]

We bought a Balsam this year instead of the usual Fraser. It was $30 and about 9 ft tall. It has an assortment of ornaments  old and new and this year white lights. I rotate colored and white every year. I have a bunch of undecorated little trees around and this year I bought 2 little Norfolk pines and 2 Lemon Cyprus for the fireplace mantle. I'm hoping to keep the Cyprus alive until spring when I can plant them outside.

[bobosensei]

7-8 foot douglas fir which was 45 euro

I have glass balls that are white, gold, and purple along with some fancier glass balls, birds, pine cones etc that are in the same color family along with burgundy sorts of colors.  For the most part the ornaments came from Michael's to give you an idea.  We put a gold angel on top, and some years attach gold ribbon below the angel.  I have a lot of ornament gifs that we also use which are metal, crystal, and glass.  I also have some traditional wooden ornaments though I didn't use them on the tree this year.

The rest of the house is decorated with traditional German stuff I've collected such as pyramids, nutcrackers, smokers etc.

[Deleted]

Ours is an 8 foot artificial.  I bought it like 14 years ago on clearance after Christmas and it does look very real.  The kids decorated it this year, so it has one strand of white lights and one strand of blue kind of draped off to the side.  The ornaments were all put on by my 4 year old so they are in the 3 foot to 5 foot band area around the tree.  About half the ornaments are ones they made over the years at school or daycare and then a lot of baby's first, baby's second, baby's third...LOL   We set it up on the four season porch which doubles as the toy room the rest of the year.  It's nice, even though it's in the back of the house and out of the way you can still see it from the road driving by because the porch has windows all around.

I used to put icicle lights up around the entire house and garage.  I am so over that.  It was some high risk work. 

[Spellbound454]

We are putting ours up tomorrow.....

Family comes round for evening meal....... then its mince pies, Christmas music, Santa hats, bucks fizz

and we all put the tree up together.


Its a snow covered fake fir with cones......white lights and gold and dusky pink baubles....gold angel on top


Its not exactly neat by the time the everyone has excitedly hung the decorations....but that's just the way we like it.

[flamingo]

We have a 6' fake, white, pre-lit tree. My DH prefers real trees, but said if we are going with a fake tree, let's really go all out fake. So, white it is. We only moved the sentimental xmas ornaments this time, so it's decorated, but definitely has room for a few more. Next time I'm at my parents, my mom promised she and I would go through her ornaments and I can have my pick. My parents don't put up a tree, though they do decorate a little. I would have been happy with a fiber-optic table top tree, but DH loves Christmas decorations, and I foresee our tree being up til mid-January. Whatever, it's not in our way, and while putting it up is fun, taking all the stuff down is a PITA that I don't mind avoiding!

[Bonny]

Dec 9, 2014 13:36:17 GMT -5 bobosensei said:

7-8 foot douglas fir which was 45 euro

I have glass balls that are white, gold, and purple along with some fancier glass balls, birds, pine cones etc that are in the same color family along with burgundy sorts of colors.  For the most part the ornaments came from Michael's to give you an idea.  We put a gold angel on top, and some years attach gold ribbon below the angel.  I have a lot of ornament gifs that we also use which are metal, crystal, and glass.  I also have some traditional wooden ornaments though I didn't use them on the tree this year.

The rest of the house is decorated with traditional German stuff I've collected such as pyramids, nutcrackers, smokers etc.

I went a little nuts at the Weihnachtsmarkt my last Christmas in Germany. I bought a bunch of super cute ornaments to give as little package decorations. I never gave them away because I decided that no one would appreciate them as much as I did.

[lexxy703]

Dec 8, 2014 18:19:50 GMT -5 dannylion said:

I'm too lazy or unmotivated or something to put in the effort and expense to put up a tree only I would see. I make do by enjoying other people's trees (and not having to put everything away at the end of the season. Or April.)

My exact sentiments.  I drive slowly through my neighborhood on my way home sight seeing other peoples trees & decorations.

[Formerly SK]

Dec 8, 2014 19:39:01 GMT -5 lynnerself said:

My Christmas tree story this year:

We live in Oregon, so we always go cut a fresh tree. We always go to the same place, only 5 miles away, and we always get a Noble fir.

They must have too much stock, because the trees are getting too tall. So they sheared the bottom 2 or 3 feet up to leave a 6-8 ft tree. DH and I (age 60) and our beagle (age 16) went to get the tree as usual. It was warm, but quite muddy.

So we pick a very nice tree. Knowing that it will be about 8 feet after we cut off the bottom. So the tree comes down and we can barely lift it. We cut another foot off and start hauling in out. We hadn't realized that a tree that tall, even if you just use the top, has a huge trunk. We hauled the tree a about a hundred yards and gave up. There was no way we were going to get that tree down to pay, put it on top of our SUV and then get it upright in our house.

We went back and cut another tree. Still very heavy but we managed to get this one out. Being honest people we explained the situation and paid for both trees. Tired and covered in needles and mud we made it home.

The good news however? Normally Noble firs from this farm are about $35. But this year they were only $20. So even paying for 2 trees we were only out $40.

The tree we got was still almost too big. It is inside and just touching the 8 ft ceiling.

Still need to decorate it.

We had a similar situation - our tree had about 2' of the bottom trunk sheered off.  We figured it would be fine once we cut off the extra stump, and did manage to get it to the car and get it home.  Problem was, the trunk diameter was too large to fit in the tree stand, so we had to cut off even more to create a smaller stump.  This ended up being fine in the end, though, because the tree reaches within 2" of the ceiling - too tall for the topper.  Oh well, lesson learned, don't buy a tree that has been sheared at the bottom. 

We also paid $20 for ours.  Family farm we've been going to for about ten years now. 

[cyanne]

We've been buying flocked trees the past couple of years but I thought it was too pricey so I planned on buying a regular tree. We went to the lot, looked at all of the long needle, non-flocked 7 foot trees and they were either bare on the bottom or had a crooked stem so I ended up with a flocked tree again this year. I wasn't happy with the $90 price but they always flock the best trees because they charge such a premium for them. It 's a beautiful scotch pine with white flocking that looks like snow on the needles. With the predicted temperatures it might be our only shot at a white Christmas.

[weltschmerz]

Tell Me About Your Christmas Tree!

It's nonexistent.