4 Christmas Trees, 3 French Hens, 2 Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

The first tree.

I decided I would make a post about the FOUR Christmas trees we have this year since three of them are vintage or sort of vintage. My husband likes to joke about our four Christmas trees though I think he is secretly kind of proud of them. We went from one Christmas tree last year to four this year. We started out with the Christmas tree I have had for seventeen years. I bought it the first year I lived on my own in Kansas while I was going to grad school. It was a little half size tree that sat on a table. It wasn't anything special. I was very poor and couldn't afford much. Considering the price I paid I thought it shaped up into a nice little tree. The little houses under the tree are vintage. They were once on a string of lights that didn't last long. My mom took them off and they ended up in a little box of Christmas decorations I was always given to decorate my room every Christmas. I loved the little houses and setting them up to make a Christmas village.

My parents 40 year old tree.

My parents have had the same Christmas tree for  over forty years. It came from a department store in Chicago.  I always loved that tree. It was really tall and packed with ornaments. I aways loved the way the angel was about a centimeter from touching the ceiling. My grandparents who lived in Chicago had the exact same tree. It was in their garage when it collapsed from an ice storm. The Christmas decorations did not get removed before they were destroyed from the weather. My mom always complained about her tree and talked about getting a new one. I would always harass her until she gave in and kept it.

She finally went and bought a tree without me knowing it. Now we have the old Christmas tree that is over forty years old. I still love it and think it looks as good as any tree you could go out and buy today. It might even look better! Our ceilings are so high the top isn't quite as close to the ceiling as it was at my parents house. I eventually need to get an angel for the top instead of a star. It is now in our living room and the little tabletop tree is in the "dressing room". The little table top tree is the only tree we have that is not vintage.

I made the joy pillows in 8th grade sewing class.

Grandpa's Tree

The next tree is another hand me down from my mom. Not that long ago when those skinny rustic Christmas trees became in vogue she bought this skinny, rustic tree to decorate in memory of my grandfather (her dad) who died of cancer when I was in the 7th grade. I was very close to my grandpa and spent a lot of time with him. The honorary ornament on this tree is a bird's nest he gave me over thirty years ago to take to school for show and tell. The tree also has a red bike on it because my grandpa would ride his red bike everywhere. He even road his bike about 25 minutes from his town to our town to come and visit. There is a wagon on the tree because he would pull me all over town in a red wagon. My mom always says I knew more people in the town she grew up in than her because of my grandpa taking me in the red wagon to visit people. There are also little animals and gardening tools on the tree. My grandpa loved animals and nature. He had a huge garden that was probably about three house lots big. He would give vegetables from the garden away to everyone he knew. This tree has the vintage bird's nest and lots of vintage memories. If you come stay in our guest room this is where you will find the grandpa tree.

The bird's nest for show and tell.

The last tree is truly vintage. My husband kept talking about aluminum Christmas trees. I was never really that excited about them and definitely wasn't impressed by the color wheels for them that seem so popular these days. We saw an aluminum tree not long ago at an antique shop. We talked about buying it but I felt it was a bit expensive and I still wasn't that excited about it. Our family room has tan walls with deep blue accents. I started thinking about how pretty an aluminum tree would look decorated in blue. Then every morning when I would leave for work I would look over at the empty corner of the room and imagine an aluminum Christmas tree decorated in blue sitting in that corner. I finally decided I had to have that aluminum tree. We went to get it and the shop was closed for vacation! My dad stopped in about a week later and was able to get the tree for $20 less than the price we had been quoted. It's ours. I think it is so pretty. If you decide to get your own aluminum Christmas tree please beware! That aluminum will give you cuts on your hands while you decorate.

I always think about the people who built this house. I think about their original intentions for the house, how they had it decorated etc. I start to think about Christmas and what the house looked like for them at Christmas tree. Then I remind myself they were Jewish and I assume there was no Christmas tree. Then I wonder even more how their house was decorated in December. What did it look like for Hannukah?

Where Do We Stand?

It has been a while since I have written a blog. I need to do a little update on where we stand right now. I haven't blogged because not a lot has happened since my last post. We have basically been trying to recover financially from the expense of all the work we did last winter. We also still have the financial obligations that come with still owning our old house. On top of those things I am feeling a bit poor due to the number of shoes I have purchased over the past year. For about a year now I have had very painful bursitis in both of my feet. (I think all of the cement floors in this house could be exacerbating the issue.) I have really struggled with finding comfortable shoes.  I would have much rather put the money I have spent on shoes into a new house project.

We were considering having the house painted this past summer. But, we did not get the roof damage I posted about here fixed until this past summer. We called in October of 2013 about getting the roof fixed and it took close to a year to finally get it repaired. The leak from the roof caused a lot of damage to the door frame of the storage shed in the carport. So, there was no point in painting until the roof was repaired. By the time the roof was fixed the weather wasn't very conducive to painting. The painting will most likely be next summer's project. We have no plans to make any drastic change to the color of the house. We just want to freshen it up.

We also have not had the yard and sidewalk repaired after putting in the new sewer line. We had to wait to let the ground settle. It has now settled and doesn't look quite as much like a giant mole went through our yard. Since the weather is cold this is most likely something that will be taken care of when the weather warms up. We would also like to eventually have some landscaping done to the yard. We are not planning to make any major changes but all of the bushes are very old (maybe even original). They have gotten very woody without having much green. We would like to freshen them up. There were also a few trees that were lost in the yard during large storms. There are some really key spots where trees are missing that we would like to have replaced. We also need to add some rock around the house to protect it from standing water.

Inside we still need to get a new dishwasher. Ours is really ugly and doesn't do the greatest job but it is limping along for now. Eventually we would like to get a stainless steel one to match the rest of the kitchen. We need to put new ceiling tiles in the family room (former dog kennel). The tiles that were there were sagging and didn't look very nice. Then when the toilet flooded last year some of the tiles got water damage. We also have yet to tackle the pink and blue bathroom. We finally have furniture in the guest bedroom. I will make a post about that later. Our family room is without a TV which is still at the other house. We need to eventually paint the laundry room. This isn't a pressing issue but when they stained the floor they got one large splash of stain on the laundry room wall which kind of annoys me. We also need to eventually get a new mailbox. Ours has an issue with collecting water. I will have to do a post about mailboxes at some point. I have found a cool one that I want.

As you can see there has not been a lot of action here so no new photos. Oh yes! I forgot to tell you that we got the door on the indoor kitchen grill repaired. It is now in great shape. Thank you to my wonderful cousin for taking care of that for us. I forgot to add the fireplace to our list of to dos. My husband would kill me if I forget to list it because I think it is at the top of his list! When we had the house inspected we were told they didn't think our fireplace was lined. Apparently not having a lined fireplace is extremely dangerous even though the fireplace has been used in the past. We need to have it inspected by an expert (along with the chimney to the kitchen grill) and then decide how we will proceed if it is not lined. There is a pretty good chance we will turn it into a gas fireplace.