Oh Christmas Tree...Part II

And this would be our other lovely, live tree that my Mister insists on buying becasue they smell so good! I, on the other hand, only insist on buying the tree right after Thanksgiving so it can be up and decorated for the Monks' family birthday party that usually falls the weekend after Thanksgiving. We are able to pull this off + still have it look fresh and green for Christmas because we put it on our closed- in front porch. Although the windows are new, there is zero insulation out there. We keep the french doors between this porch + the dining room closed to conserve heat energy. {Sadly, most of the piney smelling goodness stays out there as well} Although this makes the porch all but unusable from December to April, the cooler air does help our live tree from drying out...and the option to keep it closed off keeps it from being knocked down by little people! The year before last, I realized that we had quite a few green decorations, so I decided that to tie together the rest of our colorful glass ornaments, this would become our "green tree". I used some cascading green ribbon + some green, glittery, artificial pointsettas...but I still felt that I was in need of some decorations to fill in the gaps. In keeping with the "green" theme, again, I upcycled some of the cardboard packing boxes we had from my Christmas shopping by cutting them in the shape of simple triangular christmas trees...The Monks painted them green...and then later we decorated these little trees with green glitter glue. Another favorite decoration we added to this tree was the paper chain garland made from brown paper bags. I just made sure that if there was a logo on the bag, that I turned the plain side out. I store these garlands on the top of the bin of Xmas decorations and by using one of those storage bins with the dome top, I have been able to reuse these for 3 years now!

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I have to quickly mention that I do find it rather silly that what we refer to as out "green tree" or "live tree" is actually neither "green" {in the eco friendly kind of way} nor "alive"! But I figure that buying a cut tree does stimulate the economy for tree farmers...and they do smell lovely.

xo.