Holiday Spirit

In a festive mood, Matt put Christmas lights up outside the house, and Frankie and I hauled out the boxes and started to put up the Christmas tree. We worked for about an hour, assembling the giant white tree that we've used for the past five years. Each branch has to be individually placed and fluffed, and the process is just tedious enough to take most of the fun out of the job.

After we finally got the tree together, I put it in its place in the bedroom and felt a little pang of regret, because after all of the work we had done de-cluttering the bedroom, the white tree took up all of the newly-freed space. It was kind of a bummer.

I steeled myself for the lengthy task of stringing the lights. It's my least favorite Christmas job-- Walking around and around the tree, getting dizzy, obsessing about how to get the lights perfectly spaced. I sat at the bottom of tree, looking up with a wad of tangled lights in my hand, and just...couldn't....bear it.  I lasted for about three minutes of untangling and winding, and finally said FORGET IT and immediately drove to Target to buy a pre-assembled, pre-lit tree about 1/3 the size of the white monstrosity.

I'm totally over the white tree. It was great in a retro kind of way, but this new tree takes up way less space, took five minutes to get out of the box and light, and made the decorating process much more enjoyable. I'm all about simplicity these days, and the white tree was cramping my style.

Tah-dah!