EVOLUTION OF A CHRISTMAS TREE

It’s no secret that I LOVE Christmas.  In fact, I love everything about the Holidays and do a lot of entertaining during those weeks, but before the entertaining can happen the decorating has to happen.  I do quite a bit of decorating but only have a week between Thanksgiving and my first Christmas dinner so, needless to say, I have several short sleeping nights during that week.

One of the biggest tasks is getting the Christmas trees up.  My main tree is in my living room.  It’s seven feet tall and holds my collection of angel ornaments acquired over a thirty-five year period.  Needless to say I have hundreds of them and it takes literally hours to get them on the tree.  Yesterday was designated for putting up the angel tree.

After the tree is standing I string it with small white lights.  Once the lights are in place it’s ready for the first spiral of ribbon which is a wide metallic gold one.  All of the ribbons for this tree are stored on spools so before I can put them on the tree  I need to iron them.  This gets rid of the curl and gives them a nice crisp look.  

Once the metallic gold ribbon is ironed and in place, it’s time for the second ribbon. This is a narrow burgundy ribbon that is spiraled inside the gold ribbon.  Once that is done the Angel tree top is added.  This tree top is a starched crocheted angel that belonged to my Mom who passed away twelve years ago.  It now serves as a wonderful holiday memento.

Once the ribbons are all in place it’s time to add the HUNDREDS of angel ornaments that I’ve collected.  Because there are so many ornaments it takes a few hours to put them on the tree (this year it took three and a half hours).  What I love most about this collection though is how eclectic it is.  I have everything from crystal, sterling silver, and fine porcelain angels to simple, fun, arts and crafts angels.  The combination works beautifully.  

This year, I finished the angel tree early enough that I still had time to but up the smaller tree in my dining room.  This tree holds ornaments inherited from my family as well as other ornaments I’ve purchased over the years.  Now I just need to add skirting to both trees and we're all ready for the festivities.  

All in all, the total time to put up both trees was just a little over eight hours.  A fruitful day’s work indeed.