Sad to see the tree go...........

Christmas has come and gone........it was great. The new year, the new decade, has begun. Today I was remind of my Valentine Tree, from years ago. I had mentioned it a while ago and decided today is the day to tell you about it.......

After Christmas, I couldn't bare to take the tree and all its beautiful lights down. I had so enjoyed getting up extra early, pouring myself a cup of coffee and spending an hour by the tree relaxing before getting into another hectic day . Whether I daydreamed, read, planned my day or my life, it didn't matter. It help me immensley, one blustery winter.

One morning, mid-January, while I was musing beside my tree, an idea hit me. I would turn the Christmas Tree into a Valentine Tree! I raided my craft and sewing stashes. I did a little shopping. When I returned home, I told the kids my idea.

Anything which didn't pertain to Valentine's Day was carefully wrapped and put away. The lights, tinsel, red and pink ornaments, artificial candy ornaments and heart-shaped ornaments were all that were left when we finished. Now, we added red and pink paper doilies, yards and yards of pink and red ribbon, lace ribbon and more Valentine goodies. It looked delightful! Very Victorian!

Throughout the next month, the kids made paper snowflakes and Valentines for the tree. When it was time to make our annual (which has never become annual) Lebkuchenherzen, we hung those on the tree, too.

I spent six more weeks enjoying coffee, in the peace of twinkling lights. All-in-all, it was a beautiful tree. Although, I did hear whisperings mentioning locking me up if the tree became a St Patrick's Day Tree!

Going SEW slow!

Sewing has really slowed down this week. Heidi came home from Cambodia a week ago. I've been working lots of overtime and the Christmas tree..........

We were all going to put it up last Sunday. I was going to make clam chowder and we would trim the tree. Those were the plans. The reality was, once we thought about out large fake tree our enthusiasm waned.

We have had fake trees since 1982. Mostly, it was an economic choice. But, also, as a newly single mom of a five year old and two year old, muscling a tree into a car, dragging it up the stairs to the house, getting it into the tree stand and then dropping needles all through the house, as I removed it after Christmas, wasn't my idea of fun. Add to this the fact that I like to keep the tree up forever (hmmmm, may blog about my Valentine tree sometime), an artificial tree made sense to me.

Our tradition has been to set the tree up on Thanksgiving. This year, it didn't happen and we were looking at the tree on December 13 attempting to make a plan. No one was excited about getting the lights on the tree. Eight or so years ago, I invested in a pre-lit tree. It worked well for five years. By last year, most of the strings had burnt out. We through some new strands on and went on decorating. Some of those bit the dust during the season. I grumbled as I put the tree away.

So you see, it was easy to weaken to the traditional begging for a REAL tree. I succumbed. Robert, S and I went looking. We found a nice 6-footer for $29.00. Home it went. We stopped off to buy LED lights for the tree. When we all got back home again (Heidi and Erik had run to storage to get Heidi's stuff.), we discovered the tree stand I had was an electric stand, for my revolving fake tree. We decided we would try it again Monday night. We ordered pizza, watched a movie and went to bed.

Monday , Heidi and Erik made the clam chowder before I got home from work. Yippeee!!! It is a favorite comfort food for a cold and rainy night. Robert found a tree stand, after running to five stores. Everyone was out!!! He bought the last one at Orchard Supply Hardware. After dinner, Erik and Robert got the tree into the stand. We started to put the lights on the tree, only to discover half of the boxes had yellow-white lights. The other half had blue-white.

By Wednesday night, we finally have the tree up. Everyone participated in the decorating, which has been a struggle in the past. It looks fabulous! Needless to say, I got no sewing done, but I am back at it today. I have nine days off work, so I should get everything completed. I hope :o}