our first christmas tree!!!

Saturday we embarked on quite the Christmas adventure. We started the morning by walking down to our local market. . .not many veggies, but tons of wreaths, swags, greenery, etc. After purchasing our first sprig of mistletoe, we hurried home and hopped in the Jeep to embark on our search for our first Christmas tree. We chose a place that was cheap, but in the middle of nowhere. We're talking miles and miles of unmarked and unpaved roads. Then, all of a sudden, we arrived at this little unpretentious shack on top of a hill. A nice gentleman handed us a saw and a buggy, and we were off! To be honest, most of their trees were pretty barren and unkempt so we wandered through all their fields until we found this beast:


As you can see it is a spruce pine that is over twice the height of Susan Ada. 11 ft to be precise. We currently have 12 ft ceilings and doubt we'll ever have the opportunity to have such a massive tree again, so we went for it! Curt sawed it down and hauled it back to the shack. The boys were barely able to shove it through the baler. They all persevered and loaded up on our Jeep.


So, we're driving home, pleased as punch to find a tree with such character (for only $35), thinking that our day can't get much better. . .when it started snowing!!! Can we say picturesque? We stopped by the Appomattox Court House on our way home. . .because we live in Virginia and there is always a Civil War site handy:


Curt unloaded our tree (at this point, I'm beginning to think we need to name our gentle giant), sawed it off, and got it standing upright in our living room. Susan Ada was quite impressed!! We were still very excited with our find. . .until we pulled out our ornaments. . .all 13 of them. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that is barely 1 ornament per foot of tree. Oh dear. Let the ornament-making frenzy begin!! Susan Ada sprayed loads of pine cone in metallic gold, glittered them, and filled in most of the gaps. Everything's better with a little sparkle.