Decking the Halls

My family is always ahead on the holidays. My Great Aunts make and freeze the food a couple weeks prior to Thanksgiving and my mom and my aunt have their Christmas decorations up the day after Thanksgiving. So, being ahead of everything and all, over the weekend, my family, my aunt's family, and my grandpa took a trip up to Maple Row Tree Farm in Easton, CT.

When we got there, we couldn't believe the abundance of trees lined up on the hills! We went straight to work, grabbing our saws and keeping an eye out for the perfect tree. We walked through rows and rows of them. After a while, they all looked the same to me, and that made it even harder to pick one out. Finally, after wandering through evergreen after evergreen tree, we narrowed it down to 3 trees. Then to 2. And then 1. I was starting to worry that we would be there until the farm closed, but surprisingly we decided. My grandpa cut ours down in one and a half minutes, record time! My cousin Sam picked their tree, and her brother Joe cut it down. We wrapped up our trees, threw 'em on the roofs of our cars, and headed back home. 

My grandpa cutting down our tree (left)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Our tree's stump (right)

Now, my mom has a very specific way of decorating our tree. I mean, Bible. First, of course, we put the tree in the stand. Next, we put the star on top as usual. Then go the lights. My mom took them off and put them back on about three times. See? Very specific. She then puts on ribbon and bows. She owned a gift basket store for 13 years, so she makes a lot of bows, no exaggeration. Then she adds picks. This year it was green poinsettias and sparkly twigs. Finally, we got to add on the ornaments. On the right side of the tree, we have all of the ornaments we made in school, such as my brother's "cookies and milk on a plate" or my sister's "glittery toothpick snowflake." On the rest of the tree we put up decorative eggs. You know, think Waterford, loaded with sparkles and glittery designs. At least 3 dozen of them get put up. They look beautiful, especially with the Christmas lights!

As you can see... I'm a little bit obsessed with blurred lights.

Maybe a lot.

These are my favorite ornaments on my Christmas tree. I love the sparkliest, brightest, most colorful ones. My brother got the ornament on the bottom left-hand corner so he could make sure Santa comes to our house. How cute is he?

My mom also decorates our mantel with loads of flowers, lights, and glittery stuff. We hang Santa hats instead of stockings too.

Even our front window is decorated with mini trees and lights.

My brother loved decorating the tree. He arranged each ornament perfectly and 

made sure they looked good!

It's a little blurry, but this is my favorite ornament in our entire "collection." Yes, we have a "collection."

The tree looked pretty good after all of that work! On a side note, hopefully I'll have some more holiday posts up soon. But for now, happy holidays to everyone!