Oh Tannenbaum!

Last Saturday we went tree hunting. First stop was at the Torrance YMCA lot. "The Y's Men" they call it. Get it? (nudge, nudge). Nice trees, but the day was young, so we scoped out our neighborhood Lowe's. No need to even get out of the car here. We could see the trees stacked against the fence had large brown patches on them. Next stop....Lawndale! We always have good luck there with our fireworks purchases, so why not Xmas trees? The selection was not so great, so we decided to go back to the "Y's Men".
As we drove down Prairie Avenue, a 40-foot inflatable Santa beckoned us to yet another tree lot. After a quick U-turn we entered Bishop and Matthews Xmas tree heaven. The trees were wonderfully fresh and each one was standing in a container of water to keep it that way.
We ended up with a Nordmann tree. It is a favorite in Europe. Short, dark green needles with almost a silvery sheen to the undersides.
Some nice young men lashed the tree to the top of the car and we were off. Once at home we did the traditional washing of the Xmas tree. Hey, there might be bird poop or spiders in there, you never know!
Sunday we decorated. We have a pretty eclectic theme for our tree's decorations. Just stuff that we have collected throughout the years including an assortment of tin toys and miniature musical instruments and two sets of Shiny Brites.
One thing I really like is our lighting system. We have 2-inch round globes as well as the small twinkling lights. The combination of the large and small is really neat.


No tree can be without some Packer ornaments.

The blimp's lights actually light up and blink! Its so cool!

Here's a detail of the tree skirt I made a few years ago.

The finished tree.

Afterwards we had some yummy scalloped potatoes and ham!