Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Hola!

How quickly time has flown by, wow.  Tomorrow is Christmas.  I have some baking to do and a bit of cleaning, and then I'll settle in and watch my favorite and sentimental movies for the rest of the day and night, and later I'll "make" a fire in my gel fuel fireplace -- that consists of opening cans of gel fuel once I peel off the outside paper wrap and lighting them.  Voila!  Real flames, real crackling and real warmth, as I sit in the living room admiring how pretty the tree looks at night.

Here are a few photos of Christmas trees that a friend and one of my sisters sent to me, as well one I took at a local well known watering-hole and long-time dining establishment.  Enjoy!  HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE.

The tree above is my sister Darlene's.  It's beautiful.  Tall (12 feet?), looks like it's decorated with blue and clear (or silver?) ornaments and icicles, with cascading wide gold metallic ribbon.  There are classic all white lights and an angel on top.  Wowsers.  What a lot of work to decorate a tree that large!

This is my friend Ann standing in front of a tree that had overgrown her front yard, that she donated to the City of West Allis.  The tree was removed by the City and ended up inside a reconstructed log cabin representing a typical home of southeastern Wisconsin settlers in the very early days of the 1800s.  The tree was decorated with home-made ornaments by local students from a grade school.  Isn't it gorgeous!   Looking at the decorations brings back memories of childhood.  How well I remember now making paper chain garland and stringing pop corn!

The piece de resistance is Kegel's annual Christmas tree.  Kegel's is a long-time family owned (the current operator is a nephew of the third generation of family owners) bar and restaurant in the heart of the South Side of metro Milwaukee - but I believe the bar's address is actually West Allis.  Every year they come up with a new decorating scheme for giant size trees that anchor the corner of the bar area, divided from part of the dining area by a half-wall.  Here is the 2018 version:

Sorry for the not so great photo, sometimes my hands shake a little. As you can see, it's one of those crazy upside-down trees, LOL!  And decorated gorgeously in all white glittered ornaments.  It's spectacular!  It also rotates!  Oops!  I see one red (red and gold?) ornament on it.  Hmmmm, wonder what the story is behind THAT?  This is the first time I'm noticing it, wowsers!  My friend Ann and I had dinner there the night I took this photo, I'll ask her if she knows what that's all about, if she even noticed it herself!

The Living Room Is Decorated For Christmas

Happy Holidays to everyone!

It seemed to take me forever this year to get the tree together.  It seemed harder than ever this year to drag it upstairs from its basement storage and when I got it upstairs and unwrapped from its duvet cover, I realized I only had 2 of the 3 parts in the wrap!  And it was still so dang heavy??? 

Anyway, I couldn't remember where I put the very top part of the tree, eek!  After digging around for what seemed forever but was probably less than 5 minutes, I found it stuffed into a large box right next to where the rest of the tree had rested for a year.  Makes sense, right?  Even THAT little thing not even 2 feet tall seemed heavier this year.

But the tree was duly assembled and the plugs were plugged together.  The lights didn't work.  After diddling around I managed to get most of the sections of lights lit, but I have to face the fact that the tree is old and some of the sections of lights have burned out.  And darned if I'm going to try and figure out which light(s) are bad ones - I just do NOT have that kind of patience!

 I wanted to do a theme with red this year.  I haven't had any red on my Christmas tree and in my living room decor for years.  I started decorating and got to a point pretty far along - and didn't like  how the tree looked.  ARRGGGGHHHHH!  Off came everything. It wasn't working.  The cure was relatively simple, though.  I added more matching red plaid French ribbon to the part of a roll that I still had from a few years ago I'd used for other things - lucked out and found it at Walgreens, dug out some REALLY old boxes of ornaments and found a stash of red bulbs and other colors, and just started throwing about everything up on the tree.  The eventual result, after putzing with it for at least a week, off and on, is this:

In the areas where the tree lights did not light I tried to weave in strings of new lights.  I did that with one 40 string of lights last year, and this year I added a 100 year string of lights to the top and lower middle sections of the trees when, after about a week of use, the lights in those areas suddenly decided to go dark on me, too.  I also added several strings of battery operated lights.  None of the light colors or sizes match although they're all identified as "warm white."  If I squint, it looks okay, LOL!  Have you ever tried weaving lights in and out of branches on a tree that's already been decorated?  Geez Louise!

Of course I keep tweaking the poor tree (and have added more lights).  I sit in the living room at night watching my streaming shows and there she is, all beautiful, and I get up and I move 2 ornaments around.  And then 2 more; and then 2 more.  It's like an addiction or something...

The tree "skirt" is a synthetic silk sheet I thought I had given away in a charity box years ago - turns out it was still stashed in the linen closet, along with matching pillow cases, so I used the pillow cases to wrap the white lumber cushions on the wing chairs:

I hauled up my traditional patterned red and black wool rug and plopped it over the flame stitch black and cream area rug.  And on the sofa, which normally sits in front of the picture window with a sofa table and 2 lamps behind it:

I added two red cushion covers from Bed, Bath & Beyond ($14.99 each), a $30 chunky knit throw with faux fur trim from Steinart and covered the center pillow with the white and gold starred cushion cover purchased some Christmases ago from Ikea.  At night I snuggle under the afghans if I don't have a fire going in the fireplace (gel fuel).

The mantel is decorated.  It's nothing too fancy this year:

I used my three faux metal deer from Walgreens, my mercury glass votives purchased several years ago from TJMaxx, a string of battery operated white lights, a battery operated lantern, and two topiaries that my niece Godchild purchased for me years ago when Bombay Company was still in business.  They have since been wrapped in warm white LED lights to add some extra light to the mantel at night when I don't have the votives lit (I use real candles, I find that battery operated votives don't generate enough light to give a good display). 

So, that's it for this year - I'm done decorating!  I love the look of the tree even with the hodge podge of ornaments and lights on it, or maybe because of that!  It's not perfect but I gave up trying for perfect years ago, LOL!

I wish everyone a wonderful and blessed holiday season and new year in 2019.