Christmas tree?
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@RealPlayer said in Christmas tree?:
@ShiroKuro Well, I go along and help load the tree into and out of the car.
Ooh, that is a lot of work!
Trees are expensive here, easily $75 to $100, esp. if you want Frasier fir. Manhattan is even more expensive.
I have no idea how much a real tree costs around here, but I bet itās similar.
Weāve always used an artificial trees. First in Japan, where you couldnāt get live trees. And then now here in the U.S. Then each time we move, I donate the old tree and use that as an excuse to get a new (bigger!) one.
The current trees we have look much nicer and more realistic than any others weāve had before. also the lights are better.
I resisted the urge, however, to buy the most expensive tree at Loweās, the one with twice as many lights as all the others. The tree we bought is 7.5 feet and has (IIRC) 800 lights, the one I didnāt buy had 1400 lights. It was also more than twice as expensive!
I make up for the lack of lights with the number of ornaments.
Iāve been collecting red and gold ornaments since 2008, the year we moved back to the U.S. (I gave away all the ornaments we had in Japan.) Every year since then Iāve been buying another package or two (or four). Then last year, my mother decided she didnāt want to have a big tree anymore, so she gave me hers (including some weāve had since I was a child). This year I had enough ornaments to do the new tree and the pencil tree in the piano room.
And I bought some of those ornament cases they sell at Target (I already had some that Mr SK made for me) so when we put everything away, Iām going to try to count and see how many I have. My guess is that the big tree has close to 300 ornaments on it, and the smaller one maybe has about 100.
These new cases should make it easy to count, so Iāll come back and post the number in January when we put everything away.
Actually the āornament densityā doesnāt look all that impressive, at least not in this photo. Maybe next year I can buy some of the smaller ones and start filling in all the āholes.ā Mr SK is convinced Iām going to end up causing the tree to crash down under the weight of them all.
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Every year we have schlepped out to the local tree farm with the kids and made a big production out of picking the perfect tree. But this year, neither kid will be home until a couple days before Christmas, so it would just be Mr. Lisa and I doing the tree farm thing. That plus the fact that until a few days ago, our area was in a serious drought - like not a drop of rain between about the end of September and now - which puts the trees under serious stress and makes them more likely to die faster when you bring them in the house - has made me break down and order my first ever artificial tree. It's kind of depressing actually. I always said that if I was going to go with a fake tree, I wanted something that was stupidly obviously fake (like the silver foil trees of the 60s) but I couldn't find one of the size I needed, so I went with a hopefully-realistic-looking one from amazon that was on a good sale. A lot of the artificial trees now have like plastic branch tips with realistic plastic needles and then the regular more paper-y textured needles to fill in the middle and I wasn't a fan of the 2 different types of needles. The one we ordered supposedly has only the plastic realistic needles, so we'll see. It's a bit sparse, but I have a LOT of ornaments, so here's hoping I can fill it in. We ended up getting it for a banging price (not much more than a live tree runs at the farm), so if it sucks, we will just go back to a real tree next year I guess. (We were looking at the super fancy ones from like Balsam Hill but there's no way I'm spending $1300 on a Christmas tree!) This is the one we got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DMSSJ93Q/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=A3LRDQCJ73A2H4&th=1 I am going to miss the smell of the live tree, but I won't miss the sap or the needles everywhere!
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As the kids etc are arriving Christmas Eve, MrsA & I got busy yesterday:
Stairs
Front door thing made instead of wreath
And the trees
She's really into the season, keeps adding baubles to the stairs, apparently we need new red baubles for the first tree, and a couple more sets of muti coloured lights around the house.
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Thatās lovely @AndyD !
@AndyD said in Christmas tree?:
She's really into the season, keeps adding baubles to the stairs, apparently we need new red baubles for the first tree, and a couple more sets of muti coloured lights around the house.
Thatās the way to do it! Get everything up, spot the holes, go buy more ornaments, fill the holes!
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Very nice, Andy!
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@AndyD said in Christmas tree?:
Front door thing made instead of wreath
I think it's called a door swag.
Your decorations are beautiful, @AndyD and MrsA!
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie AumƓnier
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Our new hometown's volunteer fire department sells live trees that they will deliver to your house. The Boy Scouts sell fresh-cut wreaths and other small evergreen ornaments that they, too, will deliver to your house. (Does this sound like a Lifetime Christmas movie? Well, they film those things in our town. Also, there's a singalong Messiah event across the street. And a singalong Sound of Music right down the road. And a pipe organ concert, also right across the street. After a life spent in mid- to late-twentieth century red state suburbs, living in this Northeastern Victorian town feels like living on a movie set.)
I am currently in Oklahoma for work, but will go home tomorrow. Quirt and I will get the volunteer firefighters to deliver the tree and set it up, and then I think it will finally be time to post some photos of the newly renovated house.
We have ornaments we've acquired together (actually a lot of them) and a few that we brought to the marriage, but the hoard of special ornaments bought for or made by my children got lost during the move from Florida to New Jersey. (It still hurts my heart to think about it, so I generally don't.) I'll be dragging all that out and also acquiring some battery powered lights for our front porch, because it doesn't have an electrical outlet.
I'm very excited to spend our first Christmas in our new house. Muffin, their partner, and their partner's family will be there on Christmas Day. Also, since Muffin and I can now zip easily to each other's houses via public transit, they will be coming next weekend to celebrate my birthday with me. It's going to be a lovely Christmas season.
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Only doing the smaller tree again tree this year as we will be heading to Nevada again. The end of a 30 year era.
āI refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answerā
ā Douglas Adams -
@Mik Does the tree incite any cat shenanigans? We had one who would try to eat tinsel (a very bad thing to do) and another who tried to climb into it. Also occasional swatting of ornaments with a paw.
Oh, and nice tree!
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie AumƓnier
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I love everyone's trees. All so pretty!
I have always had a real tree in the living room since moving here. Due to the price (mostly), I decided that this year I'd get an artificial.
There are very nice artificial trees now, but I did not want to spend a fortune. I got a slender tree so I could position it between two wingback chairs. Pre-lit, and I really like that. Also, it's got 8 light settings, all white, all colored, or six different flashing programs. I like being able to switch between white and colored lights at the press of a button.
Nowadays I also have trees in the dining room and kitchen. Dining room is for a more Victorian feel and the kitchen tree is silver. My grandmother used to have a silver pompom tree which she decorated with shiny solid color baubles. It was beautiful.
The dining room (never mind the mess, I've been sewing a lot):
The kitchen:
The living room (these blue lights really ham it up in photographs!):
When I took the Christmas decorations out of the closet, I put the two boxes containing a village in the pile for donation to the thrift store. But part of me was wishy washy about getting rid of it. The problem with setting up a village is that it uses surface space, valuable surface space. But a few days later I had an idea that I could empty one of my book shelves and put the village there. Yay. The books from that shelf are temporarily in the cabinet below and the village is tucked away, like a shadow box. I like it. I love the theatrical aspect of it; that and setting up a utopian village.
I also put out my Santa collection:
Finally, my new album arrived the other day. I got it off eBay.
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Bernard, especially love your dining room tree and decorations.
Also the snowy village which is an idea for my sister who collects Lilliput Lane houses.Meanwhile in England, a bakery has made a nativity scene out of bread buns:
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@ShiroKuro I bought a cheap turntable earlier this year so I could play some LPs I had. Now that I know I like it, I will be looking for a good one. I love listening to LPs. No matter what anyone says about it. I don't doubt that fidelity is better in CDs and streaming, but maybe that's the crux of the matter and maybe why it sounds 'colder' to my ears. My living room isn't a concert hall and it's not natural for it to sound like a concert hall. I don't know. Beat's me, but I like the sound of records.
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@Bernard I was mostly asking re the music Liberace played, but I agree with you about the sounds...
I think CDs are too clean, and that sterile sound feels cool. It's why I never liked to play my digital piano as much as an acoustic, even when I had a very good digital and a totally clapped out, tubby Baldwin upright, I still preferred the upright.
It's been a long, long time since I've listened to vinyl.... I have fond memories of listening to my Dad's 45s, and also my own full sized LPs ... I think I started getting CDs in HS?? And of course now everything is digital, through bluetooth earbuds or a bluetooth speaker. It's fine, obviously, but I totally get the appeal that vinyl retains!
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@wtg said in Christmas tree?:
@Mik Does the tree incite any cat shenanigans? We had one who would try to eat tinsel (a very bad thing to do) and another who tried to climb into it. Also occasional swatting of ornaments with a paw.
Oh, and nice tree!
Thanks! No, the cats are uninterested in this tree. Luna likes to climb up in the middle of the usual larger one, but neither one is much interested in the ornaments. That's lucky because they're mostly thin glass shiny ones. Every one is a memory of something we've done or somewhere we've been or a phase of our lives.
