Three cheers for three trees

In our old house, I hung Christmas cards in our stairwell.  This house doesn't have a place that lends itself to that so I've been pondering options.  I know there are ready made Christmas card hanging options on Etsy but I have always been a little more in favor of creating my own harebrained ideas.  It lends a certain wonkiness to our house that suits me.

I can't explain it.

I went into Home Depot, pretty sure inspiration would strike.  Walking through the doors, it hit me, a tomato cage!

(Now lest you decide Home Depot may be too dangerous to frequent, a literal tomato cage didn't hit me.  It was the idea.  If you'd have been there, you'd have seen the light bulb floating above my head.)

All ready and waiting for more cards!

Which one do I love more? It's a dead tie between our living room tree and our family room tree. 

The living room tree is harmonious and red is my love language.

My favorite part of it are the pukkis nestled on the branches.

Can a person have too many goats?

I'm asking for a friend.

Our living room tree looks respectable from a distance.

When you get close up, that's when the magic happens.

Here's my mini Christmas village:

Cracker Barrel and nostalgic Fisher Price from my childhood.  I'm in love.

Speaking of nostalgia, these are favorites too:

My angel and Emma's angel, purchased about thirty years apart (hers is shinier).

It was adventurous putting up the family room tree this year.  For one thing, Adam misses Braeden and his strength at times like that.  Good thing for Mark and his growth spurt.  Then there's the light situation.  Our lighted tree is starting to struggle.  Some of the lights don't work.  It reminded me of this by Mitch Hedberg though:

An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

We still have a tree, we just need to add lights.  Sorry for the convenience.

I was in favor of removing all the bad lights.  Adam said it would take forever.  In just the top piece, none of the lights worked.  Adam fiddled with it and changed the fuses but no luck.  So we started taking the lights off.  They were all wound around and tied in knots and we started snipping wires with scissors which it must be said is quite satisfying.  All four of us were working on it and Adam was right, it did take forever and it was just the little top part of the tree. 

There was no swearing, but it was a pain.  I declared that whoever attached the lights had it out for us and Emma maintained that there was probably no evil intent on their part.

Whatever.

We finally got everything glowing and then added the ornaments.  There was some discussion about whether or not we should put up Braeden's ornaments but in the end, none of us had the heart for it.  We miss that kid.  Emma did put his broken Mickey Mouse on though.  It wouldn't be our tree without it.  She got a stepladder so she could put it near the top like Braeden always does.