O Christmas tree

Getting a Christmas tree is hands down one of my favorite traditions I have with Mr. Allan. He grew up a (gasp) fake tree house and growing up my dad and step mom went and picked the tree and brought it home, so I was never a part of the picking out process. I knew Mr. Allan for maybe a year or two when we got our first tree. There was no question we were going real, but he thought our cats would climb and destory it. My theory...you never know until they climb it and knock it down. We went to the Walmart in Newport, got a tree and Mr. Allan had the Home and Garden man cut it in half. So we decorated our first Christmas tree together, our 3 foot Walmart fir with plastic ornaments in case a cat knocked one over.

We've come a long way since then. We now make a day out of going to the tree farm, chopping down our tree, getting it in the house and decorated. Mr. Allan still puts the plastic red ball ornaments on the bottom branches in case a cat tail hits one. He's also pretty particular in the way we decorate. We both grew up in houses that had kitchen sink Christmas trees--the ones where every single ornament, no matter how ugly or bad it is, is put on the tree. So, our Allan Christmas tree is tastefully decorated in all red, gold, and silver.

This weekend  we got Big Blue ready to transport the tree home

We decided to go to Patterson's tree farm. Every Friday night, Mr. Allan and I eat at our local townie bar down the street. We met a nice guy who is now our town councilman who owns a giftshop, nursey, and who knew...a Christmas tree farm too. Here's Mr. Allan walking amidst the trees. Since we've moved into our home, Mr. Allan and I go to a local tree farm, pick out our tree, and chop it down. I love that we make a day out of it. I love that we're silly and sing along to wretched christmas carols on Lite 105 on the way there. I love that I sometimes have Mr. Allan on the ground, squatted under a tree, with a saw to the trunk and then I decide that I see a better tree over there. I also love that when we pay for our tree we always grab a wreath for the front door and then sing wretched christmas carols on the way home. This day, every year, usually infects us with holiday spirit..even if we're not feeling it just yet!

 I had to convince Mr. Allan the peculiar little red tree was not a good fit for our home

  Usually, I drive Mr. Allan batty. I need to make sure we pick out the perfect tree. At Patterson's tree farm they all had such nice shapes. We spotted this bad boy and had to run and tell the man working that we wanted this one. Mr. Allan put his glove on top to mark our turf since there were some little kids there with their family eyeing our prized fraser fir.

 Here's Mr. Allan helping the nice man cut down our tree

 Loading the tree into Big Blue..aka our van

 Who knew we'd have zero children and get so much use out of a mini van?

 Mr. Allan, wearing his favorite wool hat from the Gap that my mom got him last Christmas, proud that the tree fit in Big Blue with no bungees. Why do I mention the wool hat...because usually I wake up in the morning to find Mr. Allan walking around the house with his blue wool hat on. I tell him if we turned the heat higher than 58 degrees at night, he could save the hat for outside wearing.

 After trimming only a couple branches, here's the naked tree in our living room

 A good looking naked tree, if I do say so myself!

 Here's me, working hard to decorate our tasteful red, white, gold and silver tree while Davie, aka Cujo the cat, smuggly looks on

 All decorated and lit up last night as we waited for friends to come over for a cup of holiday cheer..aka pomegranete cranberry cosmos

 The tree is so pretty this year I snapped another picture in the early dawn hours today since I was up with three starving cats who knocked everything off our nightstands at 6am to let us know they were hungry and wanted breakfast.

 This is what we've deemed Allantown. Little houses we bought at the Christmas tree shops that we thought were so cute yet every year they never go out. They've emerged and Allantown circa 2010 was created.

 And, lastly, our stockings were hung on the weird rail on the stairs leading to our main level in our raised ranch with care...and yes, we have stockings for our cats...if they keep waking their momma up at six a.m. on weekends there will be coal, no cat treats, in them.