a mother's love

for some who have known me for many years, they will tell you that for some unknown reason i am a bit of a scrooge when it comes to decorating for Christmas.  it's not the idea of Christmas that i have trouble with...i mean, it does commemorate the birth of our Savior.  but if i had to guess where my aversion to the holiday comes from, it might be that there is just so much pressure, self-imposed pressure mind you, but pressure nonetheless--pressure to have your house decked out with a cohesive theme, pressure to have a beautifully decorated tree, pressure to have cute wrappings on your packages, and pressure to give the most creative gifts. there is one really big problem with my reluctance to get sucked in to the madness...MDE!!  

she is what one might call quite the festive girl.  she loves it all...and the tackier the better in her eyes!

anyway, every year she begs for a tree to decorate.  some years we give in...in fact, one year we even got an 8 foot tree which one day actually managed to  fall on me while i was giving it water!  the nerve!  some years we compromise...we have picked up a tree on the way home from church on the 24th {you can really get a bargain!}.  but it remains undecorated for 24 hours and then out to the curb.  last year, the receptionist at her dance studio gave her a small living tree because she felt so bad for MDE.

well, this being her senior year of high school and me being so sentimental...i decided to surprise her and get her a small live tree!  this morning after i went to pilates, i went to a tree lot in the cold misty rain and bought her a 4 foot noble fir.

the tree arrives home...it's still misting outside.  oh, and i have to remove it from my car by myself.  oh joy!

ok...i manage to get it off my car fairly easily {i knew pilates was good for something!} and i placed it in a bucket of water in the garage.  i do know a thing or two about setting up a live tree, right?

while my tree is resting in the bucket and hopefully not closing its' fresh cut with sap...i must find the perfect place to put the tree.  now for those unfamiliar with our pet situation--we have three dogs and one cat.  the cat never ever comes downstairs so she is a non-factor but the dogs...oh, the dogs.  and really to be fair, just my one sweet puppy {well, she is one year old}, the corgi named penny.  she is cuter than all get out {whatever that means, it is a saying, you know} but she is very very mischievous and will play with or eat anything.  so my thought is that it needs to be up off the ground.  the photo above shows where i have chosen to place the tree...just disregard the fact that miss penny can very easily get on the sofa arm to reach the tree--maybe she won't think of that!


next i must climb into the attic to get the tree stand.  talk about excess--for some reason the family that usually doesn't have a tree has three tree stands!  i choose the lightest one...my thinking is that once the tree is in the stand, i have to be able to lift the entire thing to put it on the table.  what i didn't count on was the hour or so that i managed to work on getting the tree into the stand 'just so' and then still having to tie the trunk to the window latch until i can get another set of hands to help me get it secure and fairly straight.


so voila...

now this, of course, is not the final reveal...the quilted tree skirt that my mom made me is obviously not lovingly wrapped around the tree to cover the stand yet...and MDE has not put her touch on it yet--but what do you think?  this is what ems saw when she got home from dance...

 check back...i am more than certain that MDE's masterpiece will be something you will want to see!