No tree this year as we are flying back east for the holidays. But I thought I’d chime in with a story of last year.
It was a week before Christmas and we still hadn’t gotten a tree. We frantically scoured the city for a decent small tree (for a studio apartment) to no avail. So my wife, creative soul that she is, got a collection of Holly branches. We stuck them up right in mesh basket, placed it on a table and strung lights on it. All in all, quite the Christmas feeling was achieved.
Our tree sounds like OldBroad’s kinda tree. Maybe it’s having been a mom for so many years, there are ornaments my sons made when they were still in school. But we also started taking pictures of them and then mounting them IN ornaments, so the tree is loaded with pictures of the boys at different ages, and thankfully, I had included a small bio in the ornament, so that I knew what they were up to at the time!
The only sure fire way to keep a tree to last long, is to have made sure it was fresh, then cut off the end of it when you get home, stick it in a big pail of water until you’re ready to put it up, and then make sure you water it in the morning and in the evening again. They can drink several gallons a day.
Our tree is so big this year (Anti is lousy at telling the sizes of trees vs. her own den ceiling 
) that I had to NAIL it to the bay window in which it is now resting comfortably. We had a few ‘timber’s’ first though, nothing like a Christmas tree falling over to get your heart going in the morning!!
Attrayant
The stuff we use is called (drum roll please) christmas tree preservative.
We have done it again this year. We never have enough of the stuff so we go on a special trip to see if we can find it. I have found it (different brands and product names) at wal mart,Florists,hardware stores,grocery stores.almost everywhere.
When I was a kid mom used to make the stuff with bleach and simple syrup. It probably didn’t have the fire retardants that todays commercial stuff has.
You might try the place you get your tree from.
What a nice thread.
Regarding the bugle bead garland, you can find all of that stuff at walmart for much cheaper. It is a pretty idea.
Our trees… for years and years we always had cedar trees. First taken from my Dad’s parents’ land on Thanksgiving day. But later from our own pasture. We would go and cut it, and so forth. Ornaments from when my sister and I were kids, plenty of glass ‘ballees’ as my dad would say, lots of lights. Putting lights in a cedar tree’s branches hurts like a mother. But the tree always looked great to us. Lots of tinsel, the strand kind, not the garland kind. Also, as my Dad travelled over the years, he brought back ornaments from other countries, and different little things. We hardly ever had anything on top of the tree – cedar tops are little more than twigs. My Dad had a big gun cabinet in the corner, and the tree’s reflection in the glass was almost prettier than the tree itself. We would turn on the ceiling fan, and when the strand tinsel began to move, it was as though the tree was sparkling. So pretty. Then, one summer my Dad died. Right in front of the space where we always put our tree.
Why did I write this? It is depressing me.
The first year after he died, we were going to be okay. We went out and bought a tree, a Frasier fir. We put it in a different room. It was okay. Then, we pulled out the old boxes of ornaments. We opened them, and saw all of the old memories, and… it was not okay any more. We taped the boxes back up. Stored them. We haven’t opened them since. Perhaps someday.
But now we buy new ornaments every year. We also buy our tree every year. Frasier firs don’t hurt at all when you stick your arms way inside the branches to put the lights on. This year, there are 300 lights on our six foot tree. The tiny ones with blue, green, red, yellow, and pink. Some homemade ornaments with sequins I made over Thanksgiving, lots of boughten ones. They are plastic that look like glass. My mom has nine cats. Then you add my three… I went ahead and tied the tree to the wall, from the start. I wrapped the ornament hooks around each branch. The tree is still up (knock wood) and no ornaments lost. No tinsel though; the cats think it is really yummy kitty pasta. I love the tree… I read in a book a description of a Christmas tree as ‘a pyramid of jewels’. That’s what ours looks like.
I used to work with some foresters and they said that plain water works just as well as a tree preservative. Just to help you save some $$.
Also, one year one of our dogs apparently ate quite a bit of strand tinsel off of the tree, and make sparkly doo-doos in the yard. It didn’t make him sick or anything. I think cat stomachs are more sensitive.
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a theme tree, but it’s really beautiful.
We’ve got a few regular strings with this snowflake things that go on the bulbs, and the rest are all those programmable twinklers (with 20 different kinds of twinkle/fade/whatever for each string). Then we also have a lot of those moving ornaments (Hallmark, I think). We’ve got some great ones, like the Merry-Go-Round, the elves running around the tree, and the nutcrackers walking around.
We also put on garland or beads. The majority of our ornaments, though, are these great balls that are really unique. A lady in town used to make them. She’d go to estate sales and stuff like that and buy jewelry. She then wrap foam balls in velvet, and use the jewelry to make different designs. My Grandma knew her back when she started making them, so we’ve got boxes and boxes of them. She now sells them for $50/ball. They’re really something to behold.
I love these stories.
Thank you for sharing your memories about your dad, bwk. It can’t be easy celebrating this time of year without him.
Our tree has suffered its first casualty; flod2k ate one of the paper flags.
We don’t have a Christmas tree, nor any other types of decorations. We have all of our presents near the TV…cuz, you know, God is in the TV…
Thank you, Audrey. I really do appreciate that. It does get a little easier every year. Thank goodness…!
We make a little artificial tree for the cemetary. I use a hot glue gun to put the ornaments on and use the starry wire garland on it. The little stars wave in the breezes, and look like lights. We have been putting it in the iron vase, and several other people have started bringing similarly decorated trees to their family members’ graves.
Last year, my mom -really- pushed the base of the tree into the vase. When it came time to get it out, she couldn’t, and we were playing tug-o-war with this little tree and vase in the cemetary, and then we were laughing and couldn’t do anything with it.
We had to bring it home with us, and my husband had to pry it out with tools. It was pretty funny.
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*Originally posted by Gravity *
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Funny, that’s what we did with our tree here at work. It had to fit into a corner, so it’s kind a 1/4 tree, with the extra branches filling out the front.
My tree at home is a collection from the last 10 years, but they are all still themed. Strands of solid color lights, red, green and white. The tree is 7 1/2 feet tall and has approximately 1000 lights (counting the burnt out ones). Red velvet bows. Apples. Plastic icicles in green and gold (not the tinsel ones, actual molded plastic icicle shapes.) Gold bells. A glass tree-top ornament with holly-berry trim. Mmmm, that’s it this year. I vary it from year to year a little, like using silk poinsettias on the tree. There’s a link to the picture of my tree in the MPSIMS “Christmas tree pictures” thread.
I’m just gonna try a couple drops of regular liquid plant food in the water this time. Maybe I’ll stumble on to something.