It’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit when your living room consists of a couple of plastic-wrapped chairs covered in drywall dust.
Our first bit of festive cheer began with getting our Christmas tree. We always attempt to buy one from a local tree lot, but trees over 8′ are always so expensive. So every year we reluctantly go to Home Depot where supply is high and costs are relatively low. I think this year I chose the heaviest tree in the lot.
We weren’t quite ready to set up the tree, but we needed it for this year’s holiday photo.
Our photo shoot took about an hour, but we finally got a shot that wasn’t blurry or off-centre. I’m sure our neighbours enjoyed watching us run back and forth between the tree and the camera to make adjustments. Perhaps next year we’ll recruit a photographer to help.
The final product looked like this:
But without snow or furniture, it still didn’t quite feel like Christmas. Then we had the first real snow storm of the season and things were feeling wintery…
Eventually our living room was tree ready, so we dragged it inside and set it up. It was a heavy tree, so getting it inside and in its stand was a bit of an ordeal. It was also considerably lopsided.
We managed to smush the fat side against the wall and stand it up straight thanks to some awkward tree adjustments.
I think this might be the best tree we’ve ever had.
I added a few more subtle decorations, like a beer bottle filled with greens.
Our efforts outdoors were less magical. We had two strands of lights and no plan for how to attach them to the house so I made a wreath and called it a day.
Next year we’ll do better… and perhaps the awful green trim and matching mailbox will be gone…