The Three Trees

I know, I know!  Three real trees in one house (four if you count the tiny tree up in my bedroom) is more than a bit excessive, especially for someone who doesn’t do very much decorating.  But what can I say?  I am really enjoying every single one of these trees, and that’s the point, isn’t it?  Christmas is usually not my favorite holiday for many, many reasons, but I do love a good old scraggly tree.  I love the way these trees smell, and each of the trees just has a special personality.

First of all, there’s the grand Christmas tree in the piano room.  It’s beautiful:  pretty ornaments, pearl lights, red yarn garland.  There are ornaments on this tree from my childhood and throughout my whole life, and there’s that very special hundred (or more?) year old ornament that my parents brought me last year gracing the top of the tree and bringing me joy.  There are ornaments that my Grandma Edna crocheted, and ornaments that my Sunday School teacher gave me when I was three years old (Mr. TOF loved putting that ornament on the tree, because he’s three, too, you know!)

Pictured in the middle is the dining room tree, the baby tree that I rescued after another family discarded her in a snowbank, the tree that made my husband’s eye roll.  He’s such a good husband though.  He even made a special stop at the hardware store on the way home to pick up that galvanized bucket the tree sits in.  I just filled up the bucked and stuck the tree in!  This tree only has a little garland on it.  I wanted it to be natural and simple.  I thought about lights, and I still might do that, but for now I’m just loving this tree in the corner of the dining room.  You can’t see it on the picture very well, but it has this adorable second little tree top and the main green spring at the top of the tree is slightly bended from the heavy snow when we were cutting down trees.

The third tree is sort of a disaster in many ways, but it has endeared itself to me at this point!  It has branches that spring up like no other tree we’ve ever had, which is so surprising given all the snow that was bending them down.  There are so many holes and missing parts in this tree.  It has a ton of character if you look hard.  It’s a messy shaped tree, and it has garland messily strung all over.  Since there are so few branches, the lights just hang in a strange formation around the tree trunk.  It proudly displays all the homemade kid ornaments, which are always my very favorite to unpack each year:  so many memories, and so much great kid crafting and love has gone into that box of ornaments.

So call me excessive if you must, but I have a lot of fun walking from room to room in my messy house these days!