Holiday Tree Time! First, this years tree, small enough for a bow window.
This year’s tree, Moxie approved
She still claims she has no clue who
is knocking off the ornaments.
But I didn’t always have a small tree.
The left side is MY side. If the cats at the tinsel, and they
always DID, they would poop it out later. It was gross. Another note about REAL tinsel, if it fell on a train track (which was common to have going around a tree) it would short out everything and the train wouldn’t run.
My parents when they were married argued. Some of their worst fights were over the holiday tree. They both insisted on a real tree, which lead to shedding, which lead to violent arguments about cleaning up the needles. They finally gave in a bought a fake tree, but let’s face it, if you fight over needles falling off a tree saving your marriage is going to take more than switching to plastic.
My first tree, I still have the bunny
The memory of those fights made me decide I would never have a real tree. My first tree was a small fake one, and I remember trying to find enough ornaments to cover even the front side of it. As the years went by the trees became bigger.
While my parents had argued over the mess a real tree made, my husband and I laughed at the puzzle that was a large fake tree. Our biggest tree had about 200 pieces that were color coded where they went into the trunk. If you want to test if your spouse is compatible or not, try to put together a huge Christmas tree. “Do you have a blue? Is this blue or green? Wait, where does the yellow go?” Sometimes that big tree looked a little lopsided as when we tired we just stuck in plastic branches anywhere. We thought the imperfections made it look more natural.
One year we rented a home with wood floors
We had our only real tree!
It’s not Christmas without snow
I do have many happy memories of Christmas trees as a child. I had my favorite ornaments, which I wanted on “my side” of the tree. My side was the left side. My presents went under that side. My older brother had the right side. My little brother was stuck with the middle. My own children had their sides of the tree also.
We are now back to a small tree. Our smallest tree ever. It fits in our bow window, and I have more than enough ornaments to cover it. I recently gave some of the many ornaments acquired over the years to my adult daughters for their trees. I’ve kept not the most expensive ones, but the ones made by my children or given to me as gifts. Sentiment ,rather than aesthetics, is what I want in my holiday tree now. I have no room for gifts, so they are all places in a vintage wicker children’s sleigh I bought in Ottawa when the children were young. It holds the gifts for my husband and my one daughter that lives close by.
I’m not saying Evelyn was spoiled
We stayed up until late at night finishing the
kitchen set we built for her.
The circle from small tree to small tree is complete, I enjoy being able to take one box from the basement and putting up a tree that has 2 parts. All it requires is “fluffing”. I’m at that “fluffing” time of life, and leave color coded branches or needles falling, to a new generation.
BIG TREE (the one with the multi color coded branches that looked VERY REAL!)
This was our tree when we lived in a 150 year old home in Wisconsin!
High ceilings!
Medium tree for our small
Cape style home, with low ceilings! 12 year old daughter with her favorite cat, Othello.
This year’s small tree! Moxie is just LOOKING, really!
Pinkie and the Brain guard anyway.
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Two Different Girls 
When I stay wherever I am living for Christmas, and don’t visit my sister, I usually cut a picture of a tree out of the Sears catalogue and tape it to the wall.
Brave mice, standing with their backs to a cat like that.