Growing up our Christmas tree was always so pretty. We had red, green, and white button lights. Tons of glass ornaments. Fun little decorations all over. It is no wonder that I started collecting my own decorations in college. Whenever we travel anywhere I almost always get some sort of ornament to hang on our tree. I have a mini glass pumpkin from Salem, pewter skis from Burlington, decorated gourds from New Mexico, a wooden ornament from The Hotel del Colonado in San Diego, and I could go on and on. Additionally, mom was wonderful and let me raid the family ornaments and decorations so that I could have my favorites in my own apartment. I obviously took some of the amazing glass ornaments but I also grabbed up the stuffed Hallmark reindeer that we got when I was a little kid. I love Rhonda the reindeer.
So back to the tree. When we lived in Williamsburg we had an amazing six foot pre-lit tree with little white lights. I got it at a thrift store in Portsmouth one day when I went down for an ODU game. Sadly the tree couldn't make the trip with us (you have got to draw the line somewhere right???) so our good friends Rachel and Allen gave it a new home. Since we are in the Northwest we decided to get a real tree this year (my first real tree in probably 18 years). We went to the Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm in Pleasant Hill which is about 20 minutes southeast of Eugene. It was awesome! They had seven different variety of trees to choose from and they ranged in price from $3/ft. to $7/ft. Cliff and I decided on a scotch pine as they are small enough to fit in an apartment and they were only $3/ft. All of the trees were so beautiful! If we had a bigger place (or jobs) we would have totally gotten a big douglas fir or grand fir as they were gorgeous.
We took a hayride on a tractor to get out to the trees and we found a beauty. We found a short little skinny tree that was full all around. I got all excited to document the cutting down process but before I knew it Cliff was done. We rode the tractor back to the main barn and when all was said and done we paid $12 for our fresh cut tree! They put it on the shaker for us to get all of the dead needles and bugs out. We opted not to get it baled in plastic as the little guy could fit right in the back of our car. While we were at the barn we saw a family bring in their 11 foot noble fir. I looked to be the most perfect tree ever. It was so big that when they put it on the shaker the machine could hardly move and their baler was really in trouble. We watched them try to bale it for probably about 5 minutes and when we left four guys still had not been able to push it through. It was pretty crazy so I took a photo.
When we got home we trimmed the bottom of the tree and put it into our new $3 tree stand (thank goodness for thrift stores). It fits perfectly by our desk and the bookcase. This year we have multi-colored lights on the tree as I only have red button lights and I didn't think that would look all that Christmas like (I'm going to hit up Target after the holiday to see if I can get white and green button lights for next year!). Holy smokes I had forgotten how prickly and scratchy needles are on real trees! Most of our ornaments fit on the tree, the reindeer and nutcrackers are out, and the Santa pants have been moved into the pajama rotation. It is officially the holiday season.
Since it is the holiday season that means I get to dress Rudy up as a reindeer again (don't judge....I was an only child). I love our dog.
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