It was a long time coming, but we finally got our tree up.

Getting the tree was not a problem. We went to the FFA sale at our local high school. A very cute and very earnest freshman helped tie the tree to the roof of the car. It didn’t slide off during the short drive home, but it was close.

Getting the tree in water was not a problem, either. And James didn’t even have a hard time convincing me to wait a day to decorate (the branches were a little smooshed still, so it made sense).

The problem came when it was time to put on the lights.

For my first on-my-own-I’m-an-adult tree, I bought three strands of red and white lights. I love these lights. I’ve never seen trees with red and white lights, other than my own, of course. When I decided I ought to buy a few more strands, just in case, I found they were not plentiful. As far as I can tell, only Target sells them. Last year I bought two or three strands to stock up.

When I decorated the outside bushes this year, I used the “new” strands. One, of course, died on me, so the bushes are very lopsided, with two strands on one side and one strand on the other. But I wanted to save my “good” lights for the tree.

I plugged in the “good” strands to test them and only half of each would light up. I got a pair of pliers and started trying new bulbs, hoping to fix them.

Three broken bulbs later, James and I are fighting. I’ve got tiny shards of glass all over the living room and am no closer to working lights. We finally decide to run out to CVS and just have boring multicolor lights. I’m quite upset, but figure any lights are better than no lights.

But Sunday was, of course, the ice storm. The car was completely coated in ice.

Resigned, I decided the decorating would have to wait.

But it’s lovely, now. And for more holiday spirit, here’s the revamped mantel decoration:

And to top it off, reason #56 why I love James:

Isn’t he cute?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 8:31 pm and is filed under home life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.