We finally got a Christmas tree! With Thanksgiving being so late this year (and us putting it off until now), I wondered if it was worth buying one and going through the hassle of setting it up for less than three weeks of enjoyment, but we decided to go for it. Mr. Handsome picked up a five-footer from Home Depot a couple days ago, despite the shocking $50 price tag.
With a crawling baby who is trying to walk, we knew that simply putting the tree up with no barrier was not going to work. We made a square using four panels from our playpen and put it around the base of the tree, but it didn’t look right. Mr. Handsome got the bright idea of putting the tree, stand and all, on top of an end table (with a couple layers of plastic and a sheet to prevent water damage to the table). What a perfect solution! Now we have a baby-proof Christmas tree that is almost eight feet tall.
Earlier this week, we hosted 20 members of our Bible study for dinner. The tree was still bare, so I started wrapping white lights around it. I couldn’t reach the top third, so I asked Mr. Handsome to finish the task. I handed the light strand over to him and returned to the kitchen to finish cooking.
A couple hours later, when our party was well underway, I glanced over at the tree and gasped.
“Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to finish wrapping the lights?” I whispered to my husband.
“About five minutes,” he replied. “It’s pretty nice, isn’t it?” I really can’t fathom how it took him five whole minutes–from the looks of it, I would guess that he just tossed the end of the light strand onto the tree and walked away. So I have to ask, can you tell a difference between the lights on the top third of the tree and the lights on the rest of it?
Anonymous
I would go one step further and tether that playpen base to something. Can it be pulled, upsetting the balance of the whole panel/table/tree system? We used to tether our tree to the curtain rod with fishing wire to deter cats from knocking it over.
And yes, I can see the difference between lights carefully laid on branches and lights “thrown” onto branches.
Ellie
That’s a good idea. Might have to do that in future years. It’s safe this year–he is strong but not THAT strong. 🙂
Ellie
Marilyn
Your tree is lovely. Mr. Handsome did a good job making the tree baby proof. The lights look nice. We put up our tree last Saturday. It is 8 feet. I put the lights on the tree today. We will decorate it over the week end. It is hard when Thanksgiving is do late. Wishing you and your family a blessed and joyous Christmas. Have a happy and healthy 2020.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Joan,Marion and Marilyn
Ellie
Merry Christmas, Joan, Marion, and Marilyn! Glad to have you ladies as readers.
Ellie
Anonymous
Hilarious!! Marked difference.
Ellie
Thanks! 😉
anonymous
You two are kinda funny lol again!
Anonymous
I like what your Mr.Handsome did to the lights at the top.
I glad you got a fake tree and not s real one. They are tell people were I live not to get a real tree get a fake tree because real trees caught fire easly.
Their have been 6 house so far that their real christmas trees have caught fire. Since Thankgiving.
Ellie
It’s a real tree. 🙂
Ellie
Anonymous
Real trees are a hazard if you mishandle them – if you don’t cut a clean cut off the bottom first, leave them unwrapped or out in the wind until you bring them in, put them near a heat source inside, forget to water them, leave them up too long, or leave the lights on when you’re not in the room. Common sense.
AmyRyb
If it makes you feel any better, my tree looks vaguely like that, although I have so many ornaments on mine that it’s harder to tell 🙂 I have a prelit tree that we’ve had for 12 Christmases now, and apparently it has had it, because two sections of lights absolutely would not light this year. I checked every bulb, and no luck. It’s been a good tree up until now, but I guess it hit its limit–which is just as well since I’ve eyeing up taller ones with the ability to switch between white and colored lights anyway! But for this year I ended up adding two strings of white lights separately, and the string I had for the top section had a little less ground to cover but I needed to string them somehow so I just kept intertwining them in the branches. When I finally finished I realized the lights on top looked a bit more concentrated than the bottom, but I wasn’t about to try to fix it at that point, after hours of trying to make the other lights work! So the ornaments and garland went on and at least now it’s harder to tell. So just make get some decorations and cover it–that’s my advice 🙂
Ellie
Wow, I’m impressed that it’s lasted 12 years. I definitely agree with you–one that allows you to switch between white and colored lights sounds perfectly magical. I had no idea that was even possible.
Ellie
Anonymous
We have been putting our tree up on a small table for several years now. We put our tree skirt top of the table and then set our manger scene on thar. We are trying to show our children that the greatest gift is that Christ gave us his Son. We also don’t put any gifts underneath the table until Christmas morning.
Ellie
I love it! Jesus is the reason for the season. 🙂
Ellie
Felicia
Jesus is the reason for the season. I use to wait till Christmas morning but then I had to figure out where to hide all them presents lol!!! With 5 kids it was hard and now we have 6 even though the 7 month old only got a couple gifts
Tiffany
Neat idea. We normally just put all our breakable ornaments close to the top. So far my youngest who is 3 years old hasn’t messed with the tree much .
Ellie
Good idea, Tiffany! I will keep that in mind for next year.
Ellie
Antoinette
I, too, put the breakables up high and actually leave a few very precious ornaments away for now. Another idea for little ones is to give them a few soft ornaments to place themselves on the lower branches. Who cares if they touch them or move them around once in a while?! 🙂 I have found that if the tree is not mysterious and not forbidden, the little ones forget about it very quickly.
Ann
I don’t put a tree up. Do to my cat. It’s kind of nice not having a tree up then I don’t have to take it down.
Netta
We have never baby-proofed our Christmas trees. The only one who has ever made a tree fall is one of our cats. It was no disaster, we just pulled it back up and put back the fallen ornaments. This year we have a young cat who might be a problem. We’ll see. What surprises me the most here is how early you seem to put up your Christmas trees in the US. Is it common all over the country to bring in the tree early December? We live in Finland and we usually bring in the tree a couple of days before Christmas. Some may do it earlier, but I haven’t yet heard of anyone who’s got the tree set up yet this year. We usually keep the tree until 13th of January, so we do have time to enjoy it.
Ellie
Hi Netta,
That’s a good question. In the United States and Canada, it is very common to put up a Christmas tree in late November/early December. However, my mom’s family is from Europe, so they always put theirs up on Christmas Eve when she was growing up, but I don’t currently know anyone who does that. Do you have a real or fake tree?
Ellie
Netta
We always have a real tree. We have forest of our own so we don’t have to buy one. My father-in-law usually cuts 3-4 different trees and we get to choose first which one we want 🙂. We could just go to the forest ourselves and find a neat tree, but my father-in-law happens to be a great Christmas tree finder 🙂.
We are actually Swedish-speaking Finns (think French-speaking Canadians in Quebec) and we have a special tradition regarding Christmas/advent. The Saturday before the 1st Advent we call ”Small Christmas”. The kids usually get a small Christmas gift and some have a small Christmas tree. It’s sort of the kick-off for the Christmas time. That tiny tree I usually get from the forest with our kids (they are now 6, 9 and 12) as I did this year. This tradition does not exist among Finnish-speaking Finns nor in Sweden. I guess there are local traditions around Christmas in other countries as well.
Ellie
How wonderful to have a place where you can cut down your own Christmas trees! And “small Christmas” sounds like a wonderful tradition. Is there a specific region that Swedish-speaking Finns live in, or are you spread out throughout the country?
Ellie
Netta
Swedish-speaking Finns mostly live along the coasts of Finland. We live at the west coast, about 500 km from Helsinki, the capital, which is in the south of the country. Some villages and small cities have a majority of Swedish-speakers. Both me and my husband have gone to Swedish schools. We do speak Finnish too, but it’s a very difficult language to learn and none of us speak it perfectly. As a language minority we have very good rights. Only about 6% of the population in Finland are Swedish-speakers but it is still officially a bi-lingual country. Our kids do not speak very good Finnish, although they do learn in school. Our 12 y struggle with Finnish grammar a lot. He’s better at English.
Ellie
I have heard that Helsinki is beautiful! Thanks for sharing that information. I always enjoy learning about other cultures. Your English is very good, by the way. 🙂
Ellie
Kari
We had to gate the room with the Christmas tree. We have “supervised visits” to the tree with our 2.5 year old. She helped decorate this year sobrgd “good” ornaments are at the top. The bottom looks like someone threw a bunch of ornaments in a big cluster on one side. But she loved it so we left it like that. We put the tree up early because it’s fake but we also leave it up to Epiphany. My daughter has figured out how to switch between the coloured and the white lights and she thinks it’s quite magical.
Ellie
That’s wonderful that you involved your little one in the decorating, Kari. And very sweet that you didn’t move her ornaments. 🙂
Ellie
Barb
That is a great idea, and it would look gorgeous if you couldn’t tell where Nashville Wife ended her wrapping and Mr Nashville Wife took over and finished the wrapping, albeit briefly.
Anonymous
Are you going to show the finished tree? What happened to the top part of lights? Did you fix them?
Ellie
Haven’t gotten around to it yet. Still looks the same. 🙂
Ellie
Sheila Urie
When my 5 kidlets were little we would put an eye hook in the ceiling and tie the top of the tree to the hook. Helped keep the tree stable and from falling over.
Ellie
That’s a wonderful idea, Sheila! Might have to do that in future years.
Ellie
Georgina
Last year my dear husband did exactly the same thing. My daughter watched him “throw “ the remaining string of lights at the top of the tree. She and I had taken ages arranging lights on the lower two thirds of the tree and it was looking beautiful. I came back into the hall and looked at my completed tree in bemusement. “It looks like daddy just threw the rest of the lights at the tree,” I told my daughter, not really thinking that that is what had happened. “Mum, that’s just what he did.” I just couldn’t fathom it. This year we were having some work done on the house and I asked the painter if he’d put the lights at the top of the tree. He did a fabulous job. My husband just laughed. He did, however, link the lights to “Alexa” which meant that no one had to crawl under the tree to switch the lights on or off which was a wonderful bonus!
Ellie
LOL, I guess he and Mr. Handsome think alike. And great idea to link the lights to Alexa. Then were you able to say, “Alexa, turn on the Christmas tree”? So high tech!
Ellie