Tis the Season....

Most people start decorating their homes for Christmas just after Thanksgiving. Christmas trees are being sold in parking lots and then there are all the songs being played over the speakers while you shop.

And in North Idaho, there is snow.

This year we did our Thanksgiving early because hubby won't be home - he was just home and just left first thing this morning. So we decided to have our celebration this weekend. It was great! We fried a turkey and had mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, rolls, and pecan pie.

The next day we hiked the area and found a Christmas tree.

Since I was younger (I won't say how long ago that was), I had seen several people who had very tall Christmas trees and since then, I've always wanted one. At least once in my life.

While we were hiking, hubby and I spotted the perfect tree. He sawed it off at the base and we both had to haul it back to the house about a mile. We should have used the truck to drag it back, it would have been so much simpler. Hubby says it's a Grand Fir...like this...only MUCH bigger.


It was interesting getting this huge tree back to the house, let alone IN the house. Just outside, we trimmed it up a bit, measured, trimmed some more, measured some more, and had to lop off 4 feet so that it would fit in the house. In the end, it stands 14 feet tall!

The next thing I knew, it was in the house, lying on the floor.

You will have to excuse the messy school corner over there to the left...and the rugs. I put them down to help catch the needles.

Poppy swears she did not make tree fall over!

After about two hours of wrestling this massive tree, we finally got it up in it's base and in the window.

I know, it's not centered in the window...I didn't have another place to put Dustin's desk and computer and all the school things, so it's not centered.

Hubby got the tall ladder out and a pole and we started stringing lights. Usually we use 2 strings on our tiny 5 foot fake tree, and I noticed that this tree would be awfully bare with only 2 strings. So we hunted down our Christmas decorations and found TONS of lights. Way back when we first moved to Washington, we had tons of lights on our house - icicles, trees, bushes, etc. So we cannibalized them for our new tree.


Today, and the next day, and the day after that, I'll probably spend decorating the tree with ornaments and ribbons and whatnot. I'll get a final picture when I'm done. The tree makes the entire house smell so good! A fresh pine scent completely overpowers anything else!

And, it's a good thing we got this tree when we did, because this morning we woke up to this...

6 inches of "Cascade Cement"!

Tis the Season!