2015 Day 8 - Christmas Tree

Here's a photo from a past Christmas (my brother and I setting out our stockings Christmas Eve)...I believe I would have been in Grade 1 or Kindergarten because I don't have glasses on.

The thing that blows my mind the most is the crazy amount of presents.  The other thing is the old, 1960's ornaments...garland, tinsel and silk-covered ornaments.  These ornaments were unbreakable and covered with very shiny threads...1/2 of them were red and the other 1/2 were 'gold'....and looked like this, but not green...green would have been an improvement.

I always loved tinsel...most of it was the original 'lead' kind and would get bends in it.  In later years, when I was more involved with decorating, we'd have tons and TONS of tinsel...miss that stuff!  Graeme bought me 'metal' tinsel, but its not the same.

It annoys me that when you google tinsel...what shows up is GARLAND...come on youngsters, get it right...anyway, here's a photo of our metal tinsel

2014 Day 8 - Christmas Tree

This year I got the tree setup a week early because of my trip.

GJA helped hauling up the branches and that made a huge difference and I was able to set it up in 2 days instead of a week.  There were 1/4 of our light strings that had 1/2 of the lights not working, so I had to run out and get more strings.  Now our tree is 1/2 old style mini lights and 1/2 led mini - both are warm white but TOTALLY different from each other - so looks a little odd.

That is 1 string...very odd

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This year, on Dec 8, I just got back into the swing of the routine.  I did, however, order my photos for Christmas cards and composed/designed our Christmas letter.

2013 Day 8 - Christmas Tree

I guess I already spewed about Christmas trees but I'm sure I can pull out another story (who am I kidding...I have TONS) about this topic.

After I started being "THE" tree setter-upper (so, probably in jr high school-ish), I decided that we needed to try having strung popcorn...O.M.G!  The biggest thing I learned was...Do. NOT. Do. That. Again!  What a mess!  As long as you had a BIG HONKING piece where you could put the needle through, you would end up with exploded popcorn all over the place (the popcorn would split).  You really never notice, until you pop popcorn & foolishly think that you can string it...that maybe only 1/4 of it has big enough puffy sections to actually string.  Please...do NOT attempt this!

Just when you get on a roll....your STRING KNOTS up and you can't dare tug on it because any extra movement on the string results in popcorn splitting and falling onto the floor - nightmare!  I don't recall any photos with the year of the popcorn on the tree...but there may be one at my parent's place.

Perhaps we just didn't know what we were doing, or maybe there is special stringing popcorn to purchase...I don't know, but I repeat, yet again....do. NOT. make this mistake!

I vaguely remember also stringing FROZEN cranberries the same evening...I recall once they got partially thawed, it was relatively easy to string...but if you waited to long, it was a red/liquid mess.

Repeat it after me....Do. Not. Attempt. This!