Oh, hey. Trees.
While some people took advantage of the unseasonably warm holiday and immediately tucked the sparkle into storage, I plan to keep a firm grip on every possible Christmas decoration for as long as possible. If you want to risk your life, go ahead and tear down a tree or two.
I'm mostly not kidding. I super love the sparkle and shine when we're looking at the depths of the dark of winter, so I won't be ready to be unlighted until about March. I need my light, yo.
As I was pondering how much fight I'm prepared to muster when the conversations about it all going away start, it occurred to me that I haven't posted photos of the trees in this space for a while. I think maybe three years? That's borderline unacceptable, so let's take a tour, shall we?
Starting with Mila's room, her tree is slowly filling in. For both of the girls, I add one super nice ornament and one ornament of something they like (read: tacky and potentially embarrassing later in life) each year. We also throw in ornaments from places we visit and any other random things that happen to make sense in the moment.
This year's "something she likes" for Mila was a My Little Pony and a Minion. She may not remember this Christmas, but I will remember how much she loved "ponnies and minuns".
Across the hall in Alexis' room, things are much further along. In a sea of pink and purple, you'll find everything from Elvis to Dora.
We added a bunch of Elvis ornaments this year, plus she has her New York City ornament. Her favorite new one, though, was a cheap little thing I grabbed without much thought.
Mila has the same ornament.
If you wander to the guest bedroom, the rainbow tree will call out to you and say, "I'M HAPPY!" I mean, is this the happiest tree ever or what?
I need to find more purple ornaments to fill in with, but so far haven't had luck.
In the master bedroom, the only tree is the sock monkey tree that I started last year. It's not full just yet, but it's coming along nicely.
There are two trees in the loft. The first one is the old Winnie the Pooh tree.
It's covered with a few dozen old Pooh ornaments.
It's neighbor is the snowman tree.
It has about a dozen glass snowman ornaments on it, with more set to join the fun next year. If I can find any on clearance, that is.
Downstairs is home to the playroom and the two trees that reside in that space. The first is the ugliest Barbie tree that has every uglied our city. It's so ugly.
Most of the ornaments are actual Barbie dolls because we already had them and the lazy runs deep over here. Also, I'm not totally committed to the idea of a Barbie tree, so we'll see what happens in the coming years.
Also in the playroom is this year's new kid, the Beanie Boo tree.
I basically stole all of Alexis' and Mila's stuffed Beanie Boos for that tree. Next year I'll do a better job of attaching them to the tree.
In the dining room are a ::cough:: few more trees. There's the Nightmare Before Christmas tree.
It is the most magnificently awful pink tinsel tree. It needs more ornaments, but PINK. TINSEL. TREE.
Another dining room tree is the Boyd's tree. I have officially declared it done since it's now too hard to find the ornaments.
There's a tree made out of a string of lights, too.
And then there is my favorite tree. It doesn't have a theme -- it's where all of the ornaments we make end up. It also holds the ornaments acquired during vacations, ornaments representing all of our pets, and the random things that I love enough to want to put on a tree.
This is the tree that Mila spends a lot of time looking at because it's the tree that houses the motion ornaments. Little things move and make all sorts of magic, like these woodland creatures that dance in a circle.
There are a couple of trees in the Man Cave, but I didn't bother to photograph them since, well, LAZY. One is a silver fiber-optic tree that is delightfully tacky. The other is a short tree (3 feet, maybe?) that is home to Penguins and Pirates ornaments. Some day there will be enough of them to split into two trees. Hopefully.
The living room has two trees. One is a tacky green tinsel tree.
Most of the ornaments are fairies and such.
And then there is the "main" tree. It was doing really well when it had presents under it, but then we opened the gifts and Mila decided to start trying to pull everything off of the tree. So. It's a little messier than usual. OH WELL.
If we're being honest, there are other trees scattered around our house, but that's most of them. It's the important ones, anyway.
And that, my friends, is how it came to be that my girls decided that more than ten trees is just something you are supposed to do at Christmas. Why would anybody want to enjoy just one?
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Reader Comments (6)
It's like this was meant to be...
I collected Barbie ornaments growing up & have A LOT of them. They're yours for the low low price of please take them off of my hands, if you want them. I'll keep a couple, but the boys have started filling in our tree with theirs & the Barbies mostly just sit in a box looking sad. Just give me a shout if you're interested.
We had ornaments on two mini trees then the toddler started stripping them and we had to remove them so only ended up with this year's 2 new ornaments on our living room tree as a result.
I know a few years ago you said you don't actually pack up the tress you just put them in the attic. I saw a post online about saran wrapping your trees for this very purpose. I thought of you.
I have all but two of the Mary's angels from Hallmark. As soon as I figure out which ones I'm missing, I'll have a tree just for them.
I'm sure they've long since sold out, but for what it's worth, I bought a large pack of ornaments at Walmart this year (first house and therefore first full size tree this year!) that had a bunch of purple ones in it.
Those are really lovely and fun! With just two trees in my house, I now feel very lazy. Your girls are lucky to have a mom who is so into Christmas.
As a person who is "over it" by the 27th or 28th of December, I admire people who can keep the tree up into the new year.