It’s beginning to look a lot like ….

Christmas… it’s rapidly approaching...So, we’re doing our part to go with the season.. Full Picture Album here: Linky!

It’s been rather cold here for a while, so at least this year, the weather feels like Christmas should be coming… Unlike last year when it was still in the 70’s approaching Christmas Day.

So, we went out and got a Christmas tree! Last year’s tree was about 18” tall, and while it was wonderful, this year we decided to step it up a little bit. We went to a “Choose and Cut” Christmas Tree Farm, Circle C Tree Farm (Website Here). So.. on that note… For those who have never been to a Christmas Tree Farm, let me explain how these places, or at least this one, work. You drive up, all excited to get a tree. You hop out of the car, and someone magically appears out of nowhere with a pole with markings on it to designate certain heights. The person who magically appeared quickly explains how the process works. “Please stay to the left side of the road when selecting a tree, when you find one that you like, stand there with your 10ft pole and wave it around until someone shows up to cut the tree down. From this point, they’ll put a tag on your tree, and you can come back down to the barn and buy yourself something hot to drink, or some kettle corn. Pricing is as follows : $8 per foot up to 7ft($56); $9 per foot up to 8ft($72); $10 per foot up to 9ft($90); $11 per foot up to 10ft($110); and $12 per foot up to 11ft.($132)” So… ummm wow. We were looking for a tree about 5ft tall. So… in magical tree land dollars… that’s $40… “Oh, and there is a stack of smaller trees leaned up against the barn for $28 each.” … Awesome.. now we’re cooking.

So, after sorting through the trees by the barn… holding them up and rotating them… looking to see how much we could get them to “floof” out .. and looking for flat spots and bare spots, we finally found an awesome tree. It’s about 5-1/2' Feet tall, and very full. So, we paid for it, the workers bagged it for us, and we crammed it into the back seat to take back home. Not at all bad for $28.

We got the tree home, trimmed off some of the lower branches… with one of our least favorite kitchen knives… and got it set up in the stand. We’d gone to Wal-Mart before we got the tree to get the essentials for the rest of the day. We picked up two 19.7 foot strings of LED Christmas lights thinking that surely, 40ft of lights would be more than enough for a 5-1/2ft tree. Since I had to drag the tree up the stairs, mangle the lower branches and get it into the stand, Virginia took over with the decorating.

Here’s where we ran out of lights and garland… Oops! We still had a bit more to go… and we didn’t have nearly the amount of ornaments as we thought we had… The ornaments that we did have were glass… and since Gracie became rather interested in the tree as soon as we brought it into the house… we decided we needed to go back to Wal-Mart. On that note… next time you go to Wal-Mart… print out the following “Wal-Mart BINGO card” and let us know your results. But back to the point, we picked up some more lights, and then went to Big-Lots to get some cheapo plastic Christmas Balls and some Candy Canes to finish off the tree.