How to REALLY Decorate a Christmas Tree

I rarely get on Pinterest because, as I have told you lots of times, crafts escape me.

And I want all the clothes.

But I would never fit in them because I would eat all the food pinned.

Anyhow.

I was looking at all the beautiful Christmas decorations they have.  All the mantels done up bright.  All the trees that look too beautiful to be real.

How do they do that?

Because this is how it is at our house....

We got our tree the day after Thanksgiving.

S2 said "Look happy" so S4 closed his eyes. Go figure.

We just decorated it last night - December 4th.  Never mind how long it took us.  Jake was out of town for work and I figured that was definitely the best night to tear the house apart looking for Christmas decorations. It also happened to be the day that S2 was home from school with strep - again - and since I didn't know if I would have to run him in to the doctor's I kept S3 and S4 home too.

First we had to enter our spare bedroom to get our Christmas stuff out.  We have this old room that is beyond bad repair so we use it for storage.  With no enclosed out buildings (other than the chicken coop) and no basement to speak of, this room is our catch all.  To enter it you must shove aside a million things that should be gotten rid of but you just haven't.  Earlier in the year I had this room cleaned, but the bags of clothes headed to Goodwill got split open and spread all over.  Then a bed fell to pieces and all those pieces are still in the room - along with the mattress.  All the furniture that is too large for our small rooms now that there are six of us...it's all in this room.

We got out the tree lights - brand new ones so no worries about them not working - and managed to get them tangled in a knot every two times around the tree.

The ornaments were taken of by the boys two years ago and to say they were in a scary state would be an understatement.  Last year we got a white pine tree and it looked like a friendly furry monster but it couldn't hold a single ornament.  The ornaments were a huge deal as we pulled them out and tried finding them all.

S2 thought he found the mother load of ornaments.  He found my wedding dress instead.  See, it's a spare room that holds all.

It didn't take long before S4 realized EVERYONE had more ornaments than he did and he began to cry.

At this point, S1 had all the drama he could take and he got up from his spot on the couch where he was putting wire on all the ornaments so we could hang them and he wandered out to his shop for awhile.

S4 went up to the spare room to find, he was certain, a box of ornaments that were JUST his ornaments and instead found a bag full of stuffed animals I had taken from him a year or so ago and had hidden but not gotten rid of in case the trauma of missing stuffed animals was too much for him.  When he only mildly missed them I promptly forgot about them.  S4 forgot about ornaments as he had a happy stuffed animal reunion and had to reintroduce all 15 animals to the family.

So now I have spilled boxes of empty ornament boxes, stuffed animals abounding, half my fall stuff in a pile because I haven't lugged that up to the spare room yet and the boys decided I need to have the village out too.  Up the stairs they ran, and then they promptly dropped the boxes on the ground.

I have no idea how the village gate has broken.

I was continuing to try to be cheery and keep the Christmas music going but I could feel my patience loosing grip.

We left the mess where it was and every one of us was in bed by eight that night.  In the morning, I awoke to a mess wherever I looked.  But at least the tree was decorated.

I paused to admire it and then tilted my head one way.

Tilted my head the other way.

Stood in a different section of the living room.

Nope.  That tree is definitely crooked.

Sorry for the weird look to the photo, the light was too bright and I had to over compensate for that.

I worked all day today to put the final touches on everything.  I must have done a pretty good job because S1 kept wandering into the kitchen to grab more pistachios and would say, "Wow, you really have been busy today!"  My wedding ring was stuck to my ring finger in pine sap but the chandelier in the dining room loaded with tiny pine branches sure looked pretty.

I'll spare you the amount of pine needles I vacuumed.  I think that due to the drought this year the tree is brittle and too dry.  Let's just say "shedding" is a nice word for my poor tree that is crooked but the fullest and biggest we have ever purchased.

It is in this context that I looked on Pinterest.  Really?  Really FAMILIES have beautiful picture worthy Christmas decorated homes like that?

Cuz I have a crooked tree with not enough of S4's ornaments in a not too clean house.  But this is Christmas to us.  And I guess I'll take it.  Because I wouldn't trade them for anything.