Our First Christmas Tree

Well we did it. We chopped down our very first Christmas tree. Yes, we'll have been married two (!!) years in a few weeks, but we've never had a tree before. Why?

The first year we were together, our wedding fell one week after Christmas. The second year, our real "first Christmas," we were up to our ears in moving boxes, about to head north just after the holidays.



Therefore, I went all out this year because my domestic urges to decorate for the holidays have been too long suppressed. This season commenced with chopping down a real tree the day after Thanksgiving (more time to enjoy it!) and followed with stringing white lights, using left over garland to decorate the mantle, making childhood Christmas crafts with Melissa and Rachel, and putting up the few decorations given to me by family members over the last few years.



A common problem newlyweds have is scrounging up enough ornaments to make a tree look legit. My recommendation, let your tree grow in size each year along with your stash of ornaments and potentially the size of your home. I didn't follow my own advice though, and we got a 7-footer! She's lovely and I just used garland to fill in the gaping holes where no ornaments hung. Thankfully, Josh's mom supplied us with many of his childhood ornaments when we were home in Thunder Bay this weekend, so that will help our little tree out a great deal! We borrowed a tree stand from the Hogansons, I got a skirt from the dollar store and a star from Goodwill to top her off! (Josh will tell you since I began organizing our finances in the fall, I've gotten somewhat "cheap," or as I like to say, resourceful.)



I wasn't just taking pictures of his hard work the whole time...
I did get down there and saw with him.





This little treasure is called a "donilla." It's basically a deep fried vanilla wafer and you could smell them all the way from field where we were chopping down our tree. Yum!



ta-da!



...and then I added ribbon because she just needed a little something.



Cheers to our first tree in our first Minnesota home!
Merry Christmas...