Now, a bit of Christmas tree history:
1st Christmas - we decided not to get one (didn't want to spend the money on a tree, plus a stand, lights, and ornaments). One of our neighbors saw we didn't have one and left one on our doorstep on Christmas Eve. It was a lovely fake tree - about a foot and a half tall. We tried to hang the one ornament we owned on it, but it was too heavy and the tree tipped over. We wound a few pieces of ribbon through the branches and called it good.
2nd Christmas - used the same tree as last year, with the same ribbon.
3rd Christmas - we finally bought a live Christmas tree. It was very small, but pretty. We had no lights and didn't want to buy any...and no ornaments either. I did upgrade our ribbon to some fancier pieces, but that's all it had. It smelled delicious, though - we were happy enough.
*Note - with our 3rd Christmas tree, we needed a tree stand. To be frugal, I found one for free on Freecycle and went to pick it up. The woman had told me she would leave it on her front doorstep for me. I took it home and cleaned it all up (it was a very nice stand, but dirty and full of spiderwebs). A few hours AFTER picking the tree stand up I got a phone call from the Freecycle woman asking me if I was going to come pick up the stand. I informed her that I already had it. She was silent for a moment and then told me that her tree stand was still on her front porch...she proceeded to describe her house to me and it was NOT the house I had gotten the tree stand from. We discovered that I had stolen a tree stand off her neighbor's front porch (apparently they were just storing it out there). I quickly got back in the car and drove back to the house and sneakily put the newly cleaned tree stand back on the front porch. I then went next door and picked up the tree stand I was supposed to have gotten in the first place.
4th Christmas - I was determined to do better this year, so I purchased all new ornaments and trimmings and got some lights from my mom. We got a beautiful live tree, brought it home, cut off the bottom, hauled it up three flights of stairs, and set it up in the stand. The next morning we realized we had not watered it. We hauled it back downstaiirs, cut the bottom off again, hauled it back upstairs, and put it back in the stand - with water! We then got so busy we did not take the time to light and decorate it right away. I then got so sick (pregnant) that by Christmas it was lit about a foot from the bottom and a foot from the top - no lights in the middle and no ornaments. It stayed in our house that way (very dead) until March. I'm sure many people would have been willing to help us take it down, but Brad was too busy and I was too sick to even go so far as to ask for help.
5th Christmas - this year's tree involved the following:
- getting very lost trying to find the christmas tree lot
- falling in love with an expensive tree, but bartering with the guy running the lot and getting 15 dollars knocked off the price
- six different trips to different stores to purchase, return, and purchase lights again
- having to take (large) sections of lights off the tree four different times because they stopped working (after having worked when tested)
- finally having the tree fully lit and ready for decorations a week after bringing it home
- only being able to keep the lights on for five minutes at a time because they would trip the power cord and turn off (they're serious when they say not to hook more than five strands together...)
- a lot of work and money, but a fantastic result (for five minutes at a time)
