Fake it

I used to love driving north towards Wisconsin every winter with my dad, brother, uncle and cousins to cut down our own Christmas trees. We would listen to Christmas music, tease my youngest cousin Alex to no end, drink hot chocolate and have snowball fights. Then my dear allergy-ridden boyfriend came along and my days of real trees and the cozy small of fresh pine were over. Wah-wahhhh. Thankfully, there is such a thing as a fake Christmas tree, and while I still have a tough time with the concept of taking my tree out of a box and fluffing out the branches, as long as I keep an evergreen scented candle going in the background I can deal. :)

This year, thanks to some traveling, plans to keep the holiday spending to a minimum (meaning fewer presents under the tree), and a little curious puppy that goes by the name of Louie... I'm thinking about (gasp) not putting the tree up at all. I haven't exactly decided yet because I just can't imagine not having it up... but I'm also not completely thrilled about the idea of not being around to enjoy our hard decorating work much or the thought of having to tell Louie "no" CONSTANTLY as I'm sure he'll want nothing more than to get his paws on my (breakable) ornaments. We talked about putting it up on the enclosed front porch, but it's freezing out there so it's not like we would sit around and marvel at the lights... which there would be none of anyways as there's no electricity on the porch. Hmm.

So, I'm contemplating getting one of those little table-top trees that can act as a center piece in the dining room and still hold some of our favorite ornaments. I will definitely still decorate the rest of the house out of reach from Louie, and our stockings can be hung on the fireplace (including the new one I got Louie this weekend!) There's a big part of me that thinks "I should be able to put my tree up and Louie should just learn that he's not supposed to touch it"... but we all know it just doesn't work that way. We'll see what I end up settling on.

Whether we put the tree up this year or wait until next, I will definitely be begging Dan to whip up one of these little stands to help with that whole idea of the fake tree looking more real -

(From here)