Be Excellent To Each Other

Tree

And now we have a tree

These trees need more teeth baubles.

What about tooth garlands?

Something about that jumper makes Russell look different

No, it’s his face. I took all his teeth out for the garland.

(For the avoidance of doubt from folks we’ve not met, that’s a random picture off of the internet).

The angle is all wrong, go and buy another and try again.

Only had to cut the top 4 inches off this year!

For the third year in a row of going to Top Barn we've instinctively picked a tree to find it doesn't have a label on, but this year really paid off with the show-off tree-judging guy eyeing it up and confidently proclaiming "that one's £39" - as he carried it off I checked the smaller, uglier immediate neighbour to see that was £45.

Barg.

We have Griswalded it up this year.



I wanted something for outside. I quite fancied a maypole tree like this, and when I had a look they had 1.4m, 1.8m, 2.4m and… well my Ma and Russell both somehow convinced me to buy this one. This is Russell for scale.
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So now we have a four metre tall tree.

Go big or go home!

I like it.

Go big AT home!

Brilliant!

Awesome!

Might I suggest a cow levitating half way up to the starship?

Oh nice! We’ve got more lights up in the back garden this year, and there’s more to come. I’ve gone with an artificial tree for a change though, as it was going to be difficult to buy a real one at the right point before Christmas.

Actual genius. Russell, buy a cow for next year!

It does make things easier in that respect. We’ve got an artificial tree and it takes away any worries it won’t fit the space. Take a photo of your garden lights when they’re all in place, please!

There you go Mimi

Wow! It’s superb! It makes it look really cosy even though I bet it’s super cold.

The office warms up in no time at all. Radiator on for an hour or so in the morning then it stays hot all day.

Oh, I meant outside in the garden, not in your office, though that’s amazing that it holds the warmth so well. I hope you’ve got snacks a-plenty in there in case you get snowed in.

I know there is an art to photographing Christmas trees, but I do not possess it. I don’t understand the lighting at all, so please ignore the rubbishy photo, but here is our tree.

That looks so good, ours always looks a bit like we just threw a box of decorations at it from across the room.

Ours too. We’ve had many years of each just picking random decorations up each year so nothing matches, so it’s always a jumble, but this year Bean and I put them on in a rainbow sort of order just to mix it up a little.

Same - we have a kind of "I like this, therefore it MUST go on the tree" approach, which means that we have a lot of lovely stuff but it is, shall we say, tonally inconsistent. Lady T is very proud of how she decorates a tree and I love her for that.

One year, we let the kids have pretty much free reign and it was WILD - everything piled on the tree on clumps. We even found transformers and Paw Patrol hidden in there. It looked crazily jumbled and yet It might just have been my favourite tree ever.

I didn't notice it at first, but I'm digging the colour-coded levels thing that Mimi did there

We’ve always got toys tucked deep into the branches, too. Little bears and felt toys I’ve made over the years, things we’ve picked up over the years. I think it’s nice and feels so personal. I love the way kids just whack the baubles on in clumps

Bean helped me decorate this one, but he also decorated his own tree in his bedroom this year which is so cute.

I was trying to work out how to post the bird tree. I can’t really take a photo of it as it’s in the enclosed porch so I can’t stand back far enough to fit the tree into a photo, but here’s a little video I made for a different reason entirely that hopefully shows most of it.

My grandad used to have three little robin decorations that sat in our Christmas tree each year when I was younger. My grandparents gave them to me a few years before he passed away, and I loved them, but I was parted from them some years ago. I bought some new ones as soon as I found them in a shop, to put in my tree to remind me of my grandad. Going out to watch and feed birds was our thing. Over the last decade I've been collecting birds for this tree. From robins to sparrows and from peacocks to crows, so this one is special to me.


https://twitter.com/ac_mimipics/status/ ... 0285104129

Birb tree pic.twitter.com/XdHZhvwJeV

— Mimi in Sheppey (@AC_mimipics) December 5, 2022

We I dod the Christmas tree on Saturday. It was a little bit later than we'd hoped but other things got in the way.

I got a bit excited to find we had a load of unused lights so I spent a bit of time chucking them up at other points around the house to try and jolly it all up.


Changing the colour of the smart bulbs was a nice addition, but we don't keep them like that all the time.
The bulbs over the wooden beam worked fine before I put them up, but the wire broke as I was doing it. Some really poor soldering skills later and they were back in action.



The kids thought decorating the big print was a fun addition


Lights and tinsel in the hall, and more lights around the internal window thing in the kitchen. Plus a star on the ugly old gas heater



Finally, lights on the balcony so it looks like we mad a bit of effort on the outside too.



It took me most of Saturday to do this as my helpers either stopped helping and disappeared, or, begin to actively get in the way. They did have fun getting shut in the box though.

There was zero creative direction provided by Lady T, who is generally the better one for styling, so I went about it in a bit of a scattergun way but I'm pleased with how it came out and also (I feel a little bit embarrassed to say, for some reason) kind of proud of it all.

Aw!! It’s a massive amount of effort, so definitely feel proud, and it all looks jolly and really festive! I hope you also got shut in the box?

I tried but I'm too big / not flexible enough.

I also didn't want to break the box, which was clearly a concern not shared by the kids.

Excellent festive work!

The hat on the koala is adorable.

Taxo, have your kids ever had a winter christmas, or are they 100% shorts and santa hat types?

They've never had a truly, bitterly cold UK style Christmas. That being said, even though Christmas falls in our 'summer' it's not always cooking. We've had a few stinking hot ones, but also a few where it's been chilly and we need to wear jumpers and long pants trousers.

Santa hats are obligatory, natch.

I think a lot of that feeling of it being chilly can come down to how quickly the weather changes. Yesterday it was 15deg but really windy which you might think sounds OK, but that come on the back of having 28 deg and strong sun over the weekend so it feels comparatively pretty cold and we all had to put on some thicker jackets while we watched the kids football games.

It’s -8°c here. Shhh.

I mean, it's all relative but BRRRRRRRR, that sounds awfully cold. Temperatures like that I would be doing whatever I could to stay inside the house

In Australia does Father Christmas still wear a furry suit?

Yes, exactly the same style although often with more of a slightly raggedy appearance, I think he puts on his slightly cheaper clothes when he comes to see us.

There have been occasions when he looks incredibly uncomfortable in the heat.

There have also been occasions when he looks pleased to have something warm on.

That fits with the one we know:



A clear case of sunstroke

Trees

Beautiful. You’ve made me realise that my bird tree definitely needs an owl.

Put ours up yesterday.

Quite the bauble collection you have, sir

19 degrees! Somebody is doing well for himself!

We put the decorations away today. It's always a little bit sad to see the tree and bits go away, but also it's great to get a bit of space and order back. Without the tree, it feels like the room is considerably 'opened up' more. Until next time... and we'll aim to do even more next time...

Our decs came down on Monday. And we never switch the tree lights on after boxing day. Not for any particular reason, just doesn't seem right to

Gaz took the tree down on Monday but forgot half the decs and lights, so I guess they're staying up til next year.