O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree! 

This year for Christmas more than just about anything I wanted to get a REAL Christmas tree.  I am pretty sure I have been talking about it since August.  Having just moved here we have absolutely zero Christmas decor.  I knew I was going to need to do my decorating on a budget and made a goal to decorate for Christmas for $100 or less including my real tree.  I slowly started getting ideas and accumulating items as I was on my hunt for baby nursery decor (which is also coming along, by the way, post soon to come). 

Word on the street was that real Christmas trees go fast so you need to get your tree early cause they sell out and once they are gone they are gone.  Especially since pine trees don't grow on the island all of them have to shipped over seas.  

The first place I heard of that had real Christmas trees was Every Blooming Thing, they got there shipment in the week of Thanksgiving.  I told Chris we need to go get ours because I didn't want them to sell out.  But he was all set on waiting till after Thanksgiving.  Since we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving till Sunday that meant I had to wait till Monday to go get it.  We decided to go get our tree for family home evening.  I  can not even begin to describe to you how excited I was for this.  All day at work I kept counting down the hours till 5pm.  Finally, work was done and we headed over to go pick out our tree.  When we arrived. I asked them what trees they had left.  The lady was like oh we don't have very many left.  I started to panic. But they still had some.  They showed me what they had, but the only size left were the premium cut 8-9 footers and they were all $125 each!  Yeek! That does not fit in my Christmas budget for $100 or less.   I was distraught I barely made it back to the car before the flood of tears erupted.  I was devastated.  Chris looked at me and replied " Wow, I didn't realize this was so important to you."   I lost it telling him this was all his fault for making me wait till after Thanksgiving and if we had gone sooner we could have gotten a smaller tree that would have been less money, and how could he NOT know how important this was to me since I had been talking about it since August!  It was not a happy time.  I felt like Christmas was ruined.  

I realize this sounds pretty absurd and ridiculous and I am going to go ahead and blame my over-reaction and emotional breakdown on the pregnancy hormones.  But this story does have a happy ending.   The next day on my lunch break I went on a hunt to find a Christmas tree, there had to be some other place that had trees.  I asked around at work, but no one had heard of anywhere else.  There was a bookstore that usually gets some in but I had gone there a month before and pre-registered for one and no one had called me to tell me when they were coming in.  I decided to walk over there on my lunch break anyway to make sure.  Good news!  They were getting there shipment of trees in on Friday.   Relief, we could still get a tree.  

After work I told Chris we needed to go over to Hobbies and Books first thing Friday to get our tree.

When we arrived home, to my complete surprise and astonishment there was a beautiful 7foot  REAL Christmas tree all set up and ready to be decorated!  I could't believe it.  Apparently, on his lunch break Chris had called around and went and found us a tree, then he took it home and set it all up.  It is a beautiful tree.  Perfect size for our home.  Such a thoughtful man I have.   AND here is the best part it was only $39!  Well within our budget.    

After squealing with excitement, thanking, hugging and kissing my dear sweet husband I began decorating.  

Isn't it beautiful!  I love our Tree!   Every-night when we get home from work first thing I do is turn on her lights.  I decided to go with some less traditional colors that I felt still went well with the colors of our home.  I was a little nervous about it.  I mean, what Christmas colors go with bright orange.  I used the large sea green fabric that has I nice sparkle to it, with large pale gold balls and orange balls with gold glitter. Then I tied bright orange ribbon on the branches.  I made the light gold Christmas bow on top with a spool of ribbon and by watching a tutorial on youtube which can be found here.  Then I got some smaller ornaments in gold, green and teal.  Even as I describe the colors it sounds ugly, but I absolutely love the outcome. Somehow, the colors just work together.  

Budget: Tree $39 + decor $30 + tree stand $15 = $84

Next, I made a snowflake wall.  I cut out a bunch of snowflakes from plain white paper and taped them on our bright orange wall.  This was really fun to make.  I love how each one is unique.  Even when I tried to make two snowflakes the same they somehow turn out completely different. 

Budget - snowflakes = free (paper, scissors and tape, already had on hand)

Then I assembled this center piece for our table, using some of that same green fabric I used to wrap around the tree. 

 Center Piece- Vase free(came with apt.) + candle $2 + balls and filling $4 = $6

And a few other Christmas items.

These sit on the shelf below the TV.  Both the jar and the silver platter came with the apartment.  Plus those little presents I found up in the storage unit above our utility closet.  So all that was free.

This was made of a red sheet (already had), two spaghetti sauce jars filled 1/2 way with water and a floating tea light candle wrapped in white ribbon = $2, a green bowl = $1 filled with green tissue paper (from a baby shower gift) and some left over Christmas ornaments= $3

Total Christmas makeover = $93

It sure does feel like Christmas at our house!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!