CHRISTMAS: DAY 2

First off, please let me apologize that Day 2 of my Christmas posts is coming to you on Day 3. I had a computer glitch yesterday, and no matter what I tried, I was unable to fix it. So, once again I had to call on The Computer Wizard, Jim Ellison, to get me back on track. I promise to do an entire 12 days of posts. The final one will now appear on December 26, provided I have no additional problems.

OUR CHRISTMAS TREE

2012

I have always longed for a really gargantuan Christmas tree. One like the Rockefeller Center tree has never been out of the question. When I was growing up a school mate lived in a two-story house with cathedral ceilings and her family always had a huge tree. I wanted one just like it, but we lived in a ranch-style house with the usual eight-foot-high ceilings. On lots of Christmases we had what I considered a sub-standard tree. My father  was into conservation—which I support whole-heartedly—so he decided to plant a live tree in a pot and bring it into the house each year. He did not want to repot it regularly and planted the tree in a huge barrel. In all the years we used that tree, it never grew noticeably bigger. But the roots continued to fill the barrel, and it grew heavier and heavier causing my dad to finally abandon this yearly ritual. Yippee!

Image-014So…I bet you have finally figured out that this isn’t really our tree. Here’s how our tree looked this past Monday and two days ago. (It now has lights, but I am not sharing any more photos until it has ornaments as well. My decorating progress was halted by going out of town for three days. That’s when we saw this fabulous tree. It was one of several at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. We visited Grove Park to see the annual Gingerbread House Competition. The submissions were extraordinary, and I will share some of those photos with you later in the week.

Last year or possibly the year before (my memory fails me), my sister/friend, Elizabeth, and I tried to assemble one of the small, pre-packaged gingerbread houses. We ended up with something more like a hovel, but we did laugh ourselves silly. The children’s category of the competition had better entries than what we were able to create.

With any luck I will have our tree completed prior to Christmas, but I am not making any promises to anybody. As I am known for still having the tree up on Groundhog Day, I guess it isn’t all that important when I finish it; though, it would be nice to enjoy it while opening gifts. I will post a photo when it’s complete.

I’m sorry I did not include any kitties in this post. They certainly pestered the heck out of me while I was lighting up the tree. I continually had to stop what I was doing to yell and chase them away from the upholstered furniture they were scratching. Once the tree is finished I can close the doors, but until then…well you get the picture!