In all the years Bev and I have lived together we never set up a proper Christmas tree. Didn’t have room for it, didn’t have room to store it, and were going to be at our parents’ places where they had trees anyway. We always put up a tiny twig of some kind in homage to Charlie Brown, but that’s about it. Not this year though! Behold!
We received a Christmas Tree from some friends who were moving shortly after we arrived here in Texas. Both Bev and I are big “real tree” people, but we have this, well, frankly GIANT house, and we figured we’d probably need at LEAST 2 trees eventually. (This year though this is our only one, and it’s got ALL our ornaments on it and isn’t quite full, so we’re not there yet!)
Boy were we right! The tree we got works perfectly in our, I believe the builder calls it, “rotunda”. Quite nice, since it’s a taller skinnier tree and fits perfectly without obstructing any movement!
Most of the ornaments on the tree are mine, including my favorite train engine, and many other train engines. Fortunately most of them have a year written on them so I have some sort of idea why they were given to me. “Grandchild’s first christmas ornament” from Hallmark is on here, although to be fair I’m not sure which set of grandparents that one is from. More extensive documentation may be required.
When I was young and my family went to Florida to visit my great grandparents we got a christmas ornament for every year we were there, and Bev and I have kept it up with out 2015 and 2018 Disney ornaments, pictured here. Also on the tree is an ornament for Vienna! The traditions must be maintained! (To which end, yes, there’s a pickle on there somewhere!)
The tree does need a bit more work though, gotta find a nice skirt for the bottom of it, and we desperately need a Texas ornament, possibly a Texas star tree topper of some kind. It’s only right. 🙂
We also did a little visible-from-the-outside decoration, the front yard tree and a tiny tree in the window above the garage:
All in all it feels quite festive! The living room has some nice greenery going on, although not really a traditional Christmas tree:
Unfortunately I think we’ve been beaten by the neighbors in terms of outside decorations:
Yes, that’s the Grinch, stealing the lights off their house. Brilliant!
Very nice! Glad we started some traditions that have stuck.