I cry the day that I put the tree up

The tree is up. If you want to know who won the fight? Well, I just don't know. My arm is all scratch up- like I tried to give a 50 clawed kitten a bubble bath.

Let me give you some background: two of my sisters are professional merchandisers. They both used to have the same job, doing the displays for Fred Meyer- until they consolidated stores and now Kim is does multiple stores and Melanie has moved on to other things. Anyway- Kim does these absolutely amazing trees. Seriously incredible. She does all the Christmas trees in my family because everyone wants a gorgeous tree and we all have come to grips with the fact that we just can't hold a candle to her.  

 










In fact, this year, she decorated a tree for the festival of trees- and it was snatched up the first day by a local business.

So with that in the back of my head- decorating a tree- as fun as it is- always causes a little anxiety for me because I just know my Aunt wants a "Kim Tree" and she's getting the poor man's version.

There was only one major meltdown when I plugged in the last string of lights and blew a fuse somewhere along the strings of lights, and had to start over. Well- not completely, I just tested every string to see which one was the offending string and then tried to fix the fuse. That never works. Seriously. But this time it did. There is a reason they put those little extra fuses in the baggie taped to the string of lights.

I only had to make two extra trips to the store. Once for more ornaments and lights, and then again for more filler berries. I watched tutorials online to learn how to make the bow at the top- that was my first attempt at a tree topper bow. It took two days (roughly) and about six Christmas movies (not six separate ones, some of them were replayed a few times), but it's done. {please excuse my somewhat pathetic attempts at tree photography}

 

 Now I have only to dread taking it down.