Oh, Thrifty Christmas Tree!

Since I FINALLY finished my Christmas decor this week (only 2 weeks late of my goal for December 1st) I thought I’d share some snapshots of my “new-to-me” Christmas trees. This year we purchased our first-ever artificial tree!

For the 26 years that Joel and I have been married, we’ve always had a real tree with the exception of one year when we were going to be out of town for a whole week in December and didn’t want to leave a real tree alone to be a fire hazard. We borrowed an artificial tree of my mom’s that she wasn’t using so we could go ahead and put the tree up before our travel. Other than that one year, we’ve always gone to cut one down at a tree farm or pick one from Lowe’s. It’s been a fun family tradition and one we thought we’d never give up. Until this year.

My son and I were in our favorite thrift store and I spotted this 9-ft tall artificial tree for a fraction of the cost of a new one. I snapped a photo and asked my husband and kids later that evening how they would feel about getting an artificial tree this year. Surprisingly nobody seemed to mind too much, and I figured it might be a good idea to try out a thrifted tree for a year or two before investing in a new one just to make sure we liked it. The lights didn’t work, and it was a little sparse in some areas, but I knew I could work with it because it had the height and general shape I needed for this corner in out den. So, I went back a couple of days later and bought it.

My wonderful husband spent a long afternoon while watching an Alabama game taking the old lights off and then I put the new lights on and stuck in some extra spriggy pieces to fill in the gaps. It was a little too tight in its form so the extra sprigs gave it a little less perfect shape.

And now I have to say that we are really enjoying this artificial tree! I can’t say that we won’t ever get a live tree again because we sure do miss the delicious pine scent, but it’s been nice not to worry about watering it every day and wondering if it will make it through Christmas before drying out and dying.

While at the thrift store, two other small trees caught my eye as well. I put one in the kitchen by the cat’s fountain and we call it the “cat’s tree” because Pumpkin and Floyd love it!

I added the ornaments we made with our co-op plus a couple a special pet ones, heehee.

And the last thrifted tree has found its home at our front door welcoming our holiday guests!

Both of these smaller trees were in ugly, ugggly gold plastic urns that were peeling and cracked, so I placed them in some pots I already had but would have loved to put them in big baskets (but that would end up costing more money and cancelling out my savings). One of them had old lights that didn’t work and plastic purple beads wired all over it–yikes! It took a while to get the lights and beads off but the extra time was so worth the savings!