Needle Madness

Another Christmas has come and gone. How sad is it that I have NO pictures of it? I guess when you are hosting an event you have other things on your mind!

That's right! Dave and I hosted my family this year for Christmas. Counting 12 children, 1 teenager and 8 adults, it was quite the party... although I guess that is what most Sunday afternoons look like also. 

We decided to do something very untraditional. To keep stress low, lasagne, garlic bread and salad for Christmas dinner. I was able to make the lasagne several days ahead and freeze it, leaving the majority of the work in the past.

I believe a good time was had by all and the food seemed to go over well also. Always good when that happens.

Boxing day, however, means, "get this tree out of my house"! Christmas is over, now lets clean up.

A good sign of a neglected tree is if it looks like this:

Where are all the needles you ask? Scroll down.

 Yup! there they are.

Several factors contributed to this mess. First being that I didn't water it. That's a big one. Initially I had it in a huge bucket of sweet water and I just never added more. Second factor was the bucket. We don't use a stand, simply a bucket with the tree tied to something. So the tree branches are actually resting on the lip of the buckets making it quite the task to try and get more water into it. Third factor, it is in the same room as our wood burning fireplace. It gets quite hot and very dry in the house, let alone that room alone. Over all, the tree and I didnt really stand a chance. Even if I had been a bit more diligent.

What did that get me?

This!!!!

I had to empty my vacuum three times just to clean up the needles in the house. Lets not even mention the needles on our porch and out the back door! Dave actually got out the blower and blew the needles out of the porch so we would stop tracking them in on our boots every time we went out.

I love real trees. Ill deal with the mess. No big deal. I am thankful for Christmas and I am also thankful that it is over for another year.

Tonight is New Years Eve. May you all have a wonderful new year. We plan on staying in and keeping it low key. This year has been strange. We plan on finishing it the same way. Doing nothing!