Fighting With The Christmas Tree

Well, I did fight with the tree, but we’ve made up and are now friends again.

 

When the kids were growing up, every year we would go out to the local tree farm, ride the hayride which took us out into the field and we would cut down our own tree.

It was always so much fun.  But my hubby was the one that always had the huge task of bringing that tree into our house and making it compatible with our living room.  It was a lot of work.

We have high, 10 foot ceilings so we liked the tall ones but when surrounded by the big vast field filled with rows and rows of trees, pretty much every tree looked small.

Let’s just say, we were really bad at picking out trees. 

Every year, hubby would, without complaint, fight the tree out in the garage to get it to fit in the tree stand.  We even accumulated different size tree stands over the years, just to try to make his job a little easier because those tree trunks come in many different sizes.

Once the tree was brought into the house, the fight continued because inevitably the tree would have a crooked trunk.  With hubby under the tree and us girls standing across the room, we would instruct daddy which way to adjust that trunk in the stand to get it to look straight.  Adjusting an 8 foot tall tree was not an easy task.  Sometimes string was involved … tied from the tree to the curtain rod just to keep it from tipping over.

It came to a point in time that hubby said “I’m too old to be doing this”.  He wanted an artificial one. 

So about 5 years ago, he and I went out and purchased a beautiful artificial Christmas tree. 

Remember up there how I said “we were really bad at picking out trees”?   Well, that applies to artificial trees too because when we brought  the enormous box home (and that should have been a sign in itself because it took the two of us to carry that box into the house) unpacked and assembled it … it was splendid in it’s glorious beauty but it was just enormous.  We wanted it tall but we didn’t think to consider it’s “wing span”

The wing span on this tree was … hmm … I’d say at least 6 feet across.  E normous indeed.

So every year, for the past 5 years, we’ve fought with the artificial Christmas tree.  Getting it to fit in a big enough space in a room with a new grandchild that visited often was really difficult to do.

This year, bringing lugging the box up from the basement, my husband proclaimed, “I’m too old to be doing this.”

The bad thing is that he decided this right as I was going through possibly one of the most stressed out days of the month.  Too much hitting me at one time causes stress and that was one more thing that I just did not want to hear. 

Taking the tree out of the box and setting up the base convinced me though that this tree was just too big. 

To make a long story a bit shorter, rather than take the time to go out to buy another tree, we worked out a compromise with this one.  Since the tree comes in three sections, we put the base back in the box and just used the middle and top section for our tree which made it really short, but it took up much less space. 

This size is much easier to deal with except ….

now it’s too short!   Hubby decides to build a box to put under it to raise it up.  I decided for him that would take too much time so hubby decides to improvise and bring up from the basement a hideous looking old tv stand which when turned on it’s side would raise the tree to the perfect height. 

Ok, sorry but this story can’t stay shortened because let me tell you, even though I wanted to try to be congenial and tell him it was a good idea,  there is absolutely nothing that could be done to that sideways sitting tv stand that could disguise the fact that it was a sideways sitting tv stand holding up the tree. 

Hubby was forced to lug the stand back downstairs which thinking about it, he should’ve lugged it outside for trash day.

So there the tree sat until last night when my blessed sweet daughter Jen came over.  The tree was pathetic in it’s shortness and it made me grumpy to even think about so we decided to try an old cherry coffee table under the tree to see how it worked.  Jen took over, moved the table into position, and with the strength of 10 men, she lifted that tree onto the table and ….

I am happy.  I don’t have to shop for  a last minute Christmas tree!

It sits in the corner just perfectly and I’ll put the red tree skirt around it and it will be wonderful.

No more fighting with Christmas trees after this year.  I think this one will be donated to Goodwill and early next year, we will take the time to purchase a nice, perfect sized tree that will require no fighting.

Let this post be a reminder to ME next year in November that I need to shop for a Christmas tree.

 

And I know that this post is really long already but I simply have to show this picture ….

On Sunday, my sweet husband, when seeing how stressed I was with trying to catch up with the backlog of orders and sewing I had to do, asked me what he could do to help me.  All he had planned for the day was to watch football on tv. 

I have some pillows that need stuffed with wool clippings so I handed him my bag of wool scraps, a pair of scissors and a bowl.  He spent the next hour watching football and cutting wool into tiny little snippets … even smaller and more uniform than I ever would!  He’s such a sweetheart.  I love that man.  :)

Top that for a perfect husband, ladies!  Oh wait … I can top that!

After he did that, he baked up some Christmas cut-out cookies too!  …. and he didn’t even watch football while doing it!

ok, y’all are jealous now, I know.  You can’t have him and I don’t share!

 

For those of you who haven’t entered for a chance to win the Jingle Bells Candy Cane Shelf Pillow, just click HERE and enter a comment in the post to get your name into the drawing.  You must be a “follower” to enter … or a regular reader without a blog. 

 

Happy Day everyone … sheesh this was a looooong post!