There are a great many beautiful and elegant things that I have learned from my Mother. On of the more annoying is how to put the Christmas lights on the tree. Mom would NEVER wrap a couple strands around the tree & call it good. No, we're not allowed to let any of the cords show. So, we need to individually wrap every.single.branch with the lights, so it looks like the lights are just naturally growing out of the tree...
...which is why several hours into the process I am usually cursing and swearing that we're buying a fake next year. Looking back on when I was a kid, I remember every year trying to find a bigger tree than the previous year, until we had one that we had to cut two feet off of just to fit it in the house. I'm surprised my Mom didn't kill us all for that brilliant idea.
But, this year, with a very-curious little one almost-walking around, we thought that a table-top tree might be the way to go. After lighting & decorating this tree in under an hour, we might be buying table-top trees until our grand-kids are old enough to do the lights.
But first, we had to sort out the lights. After breaking two nails trying to replace broken light bulbs, I sorted into "can go right on the tree now" and "forget it, I'm throwing them away".
The rejects:
I'm loving the tiny tree. It's hidden away behind the couches, so until you come all the way into the room, you can't even tell that it's not a full-size tree. And, with such a tiny tree, I only had room for my favorite ornaments.
...meanwhile, Parker had a great time watching Daddy & Uncle Brian put the outdoor lights up. I'm starting to think we should put more lights on our back deck and less on the front of the house since we (or anyone else) hardly ever look at the front of the house and we see the deck all the time. That's a project for next year.
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