It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Yesterday, Mike and I went out and cut ourselves a Christmas tree. The place we're doing our new CSA also has a tree farm. We wanted to get a feel for the place and the people, so we gave it a go. We underestimated the cold and our hands froze during the tree selection and cutting. We ended up with a 7ft Canaan fir. I made an attempt at cutting but I wasn't very good at it and we would've been there for hours, so Mike took command of the hand saw.

The tree guys drilled, shook and twined our tree for us with old school hand (or foot)-operated instruments, and then helped us secure it to the car. We stopped in the shop to pick up our envelope with the bill and discovered a plethora of delicious jams and chutneys. I made have to send some to Mom and Dad.

Now we couldn't return home without everything we needed to decorate our family room so we stopped at Target on the way home and picked up ribbons, a tree skirt, tree lights and some garlands for the room. If only it was that easy. We got home and set up our garlands, pounded in our tree stand, wrapped the skirt and admired. Now for decorating! But first, from good instruction from Dad over the years, I checked the lights to make sure they all worked. One was out so I changed the bulb and then we wrapped the tree. We got 3/4 of the way up and ran out of lights and then half the strand went out. Then it came back on. Then back off. So Mike headed out to get some new lights at Ace (since it's close). I re-packaged the target lights and then we took out the new strand. Again, we checked to see if they worked and wrapped the tree. This time we only made it up half the tree. Thwarted again! We had the same amount of bulbs but 24 less feet of lights. Christmas spirit dwindling, we headed out AGAIN for more lights at Lowes/Home Depot. Nope. All they had were LED, colored and blinking lights. We did manage to get a carpet protector for the front door though. So Mike made the executive decision to go back to Target and buy a new strand of the original lights, plus 50 more, with the intention to return all others.

We arrived back at home, fingers crossed that Sabbath hadn't knocked over the tree. And found the tree, still standing. The lights all worked, and we successfully wrapped the tree first with lights, then ribbon. We had bought a variety of ball ornaments for 50% off at Michaels and took them out, ready to put the finishing touch on the tree and discovered NONE of the ornaments had wire or string with which to hang them. SERIOUSLY? We have no pipe cleaners or small enough twine but we had just bought ribbons for present wrapping. It didn't go well. None of the material was fabric to it was too hard to work with. Critical thinking time. Maybe some thread or floss from my blanket? Then Mike says, what about yarn? You just bought some. Yes! Yarn. So I grabbed the yarn and we cut pieces to tie on the ornaments. But it started fraying, so we resorted to licking and trimming the ends. Finally, we were able to put the ornaments on the tree. Then the star. But it wouldn't stay upright. We resorted to duct tape and pulling one of the branches through. It was worth it.

We have about 3 inches between the top of the star and the ceiling. Perfect. Our whole house smells of pine. Perfect. Our living room is very festive and we have some holiday kitchen towels and a table centerpiece. Let's hope wrapping presents isn't such a fiasco! Happy Holidays!