I'm a little behind in decorating for Christmas. Three weeks ago, I WAS ahead. So far ahead, my family made fun of me. By Thanksgiving I had some garlands up, we had the tree, we'd made an outdoor tree for the front yard. We were moving right along - full steam ahead.
(Insert screeching brake noise here. Flu.)
Right before I got sick, we brought the tree in, and popped it in the tree stand. This is when we realized the tree was not quite as perfect as it looked in the field. (DOH!) In fact, it was the opposite of perfect. It looked like the entire trunk was crooked. So with some team work, Big A and I managed to tilt the tree just so, and it looked straight.
Then we noticed, the one little gap we'd seen in the field, turned into three large gaps, and the one crooked branch turned into seven crooked branches.
"Nothing we can do about that now" we said. And so, We Let The Kids Decorate The Tree. (This is important to remember.)
We tried to use ornaments to fill in the gaps. We turned a blind eye to the crooked branches.
We stood back, with the ornaments hung, and ... realized that despite our tilting the tree just so, we not only had a crooked trunk, our straight alignment, turned out to be not even close the straight.
Big A had to lift the tree out of the stand, (with 2/3 of the lights on it, and all of the ornaments), and re-align it. That went well. And by "well", I mean - every swear word I know was muttered by Big A.
Let me mention at this time, our bulbs are made of glass. As it turns out, very thin glass. (Big A may have begged me to buy plastic rather than glass bulbs. I may have insisted on glass.)
So, as you can imagine this whole Christmas decorating thing has not been going quite as planned.
I needed remind myself - when times get tough, the tough...
Laugh at others!
C'mon! I'm not that bad! Sometimes I feel better about myself my tree, when I can laugh at others (trees).
SOURCE
Look at this one. Comparatively, my tree looks positively LUSH. Yay for my tree!
This image from Pinterest truly makes me feel better:
Yeah, that's sad. :-( for that tree and :-) for my tree.
And look - this lil tree makes my tree look rod straight:
See? Now I feel better! After all, maybe our tree will be just fine with a little love.
(To order this adorable sign, go to: source)
Now my tree just doesn't look so shabby to me. How about you? How's your tree? How's your decorating coming along?
(NOTE: Sources for the images are noted, otherwise, they are images from Google and Pinterest, and didn't have a source listed. Please also note that I'm not really making fun of any of the above trees. They're all adorable in their own way!)
I think your tree looks amazing! Wabi sabi (sp?)is the art of finding beauty in the imperfect, the odd, the unique, so embrace that. Growing up, we never put up the tree until Christmas Eve Day, so I've sort of kept that tradition alive by not putting up the tree until then. I do have wreaths, garlands, banners, candles, creche and Christmas nic-nacs out. Happy Holidays!
ReplyDeleteLOL! Oh, does that ring bells! for me & Dad! Our tree is still in the garage, so you're way ahead of us (again) - but hey, there's still a week to go - early days yet right? :)
ReplyDeleteThank you C.S. - it is growing on me - especially when I turn off all of the lights in the house, and squint really tightly when I look at it! LOL!
ReplyDeleteMom - yes, early days indeed! Take your time... You don't want to rush greatness! :-)
Julia
One year we put our tree into the stand and it was crooked. So we looked at the trunk and discovered it was S shaped! No matter how we adjusted it, it would not stand straight. So we gave up and decorated it as it was. It was fine, just like yours is! -- Min
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