Fancy tree or Charlie Brown Tree?

My mom always had to have her fancy tree with all the decorations matching. She had several sets of decorations that she would rotate every year most of which she made herself. I inherited some of them and they are beautiful.

When I was growing up, my mom always wanted a Blue Spruce that was perfect. We would load up in sleds and snowmobiles and go up the mountain behind our house to chop it down ourselves. The difficult part was getting the snow off so we could evaluate whether or not it was good enough. We would take turns carefully climbing under the tree and grabbing a branch and shaking with all our might. We would end up in an avalanche of snow most of which found it's way inside the collar of our coat. After the fifth or sixth shake of a tree and my mom's shake of the head that it wasn't perfect enough, it got to be a chore but we all loved it.

My dad is a Charlie Brown tree kind of guy. While searching for my mom's perfect tree we shook of quite a few ugly trees to find the ugliest on the mountain. That was my dad's goal, to find the saddest, loneliest tree to take home and make beautiful.

I think I've carried on the tradition in my home quite well. I always have this compulsion to have a perfect tree with color coordinating ornaments, lights, and beautifully wrapped presents. I have different sets of ornaments and rotate them every year. We decorate it as a family, and then next day while everyone is at work or school I carefully rearrange to make sure it looks just right. This is what we did this year.


BUT I also want to have a tree that the kids can mess with and it doesn't bother me.

Lastly, we have my favorite little trees. We decorate these little ones with ornaments the kids make or unique ornaments that have been given to us. Usually they have pictures in them or are school projects and they are my favorite.


Someday we will have enough of them for a big tree of their own!

I just can't decide which kind of tree I like the best, so I do them all!