GrandmaBarb, Just loved the pretty little birdhouse and the fantastic garden pointer. How clever you are!! Barb sent me a sign that she had made from an old piece of weathered board on which she had painted the prettiest yellow flowers on the left of the board. On the right of the board she had glued little tiny pointed pinecones in the shape of an arrow with blue jewels along the sides showing the way to the garden. On both the birdhouse and garden sign she had painted Ellens Joy. I am so happy that you were my Secret Santa as you nailed my personality to a tee. Thanks for the time you spent on my gift during this busy time of year. I love it. Ellen

I always decorated our tree in a theme. Always had it planned well in advance. Then we started having kids. I still tried to decorate the tree in a theme. It worked for awhile. Then the kids started going to preschool and bringing home all of their crafts. Each one I cherish and keep. They started putting them on the Christmas tree. I moved them to other places. They kept bringing home more. And more. And more. Year after year. And year after year I kept giving each one a special ornament that they might like on Christmas Day. I never really thought about why. It just seemed like what you do. Their 'bought' ornaments would go on their trees in their rooms the following year - preserving my perfect tree. So we found a work around. We would decorate the tree my way and as each day went by they would add their stuff until Christmas Day our tree would be an explosion of kid craft. Well our kids are now 11, 8 & 6 and last Christmas while we were decorating the tree it finally hit me. I watched as they pulled their ornaments out of boxes and recounted the stories of how and when they got them to each other and to me. It was perfect for me. We saved all of the Christmas craft ornaments for the end. I take a few pictures and then they put all of their stuff from years past on the tree. And It Really Is Perfectly Perfect ! A perfect mess of all of our likes and memories.

I had a white tree from Menards (the Enchanted Forest manufacturer, I believe). It looked great for a few years. In year 4, I started noticing a few branches had yellowed. Last year was year 8; enough branches had yellowed that I could no longer hide them all on the back of the tree. I took it out last week and assembled it, and found that at least 80% of the tree had now yellowed. I gave it away to someone who hopes to spray paint it or clean it. I won't buy another white tree. From what I read online, it is fairly common for white trees to yellow over time, and I think I was lucky to get 8 years use from mine. Since I'm sharing my experience, one frequent question is "what causes white trees to yellow?" I believe the primary factor for my tree was exposure to sunlight. The first three years, I lived in a first floor unit and seldom opened the window blinds due to privacy concerns; hence, no direct sunlight on the tree. Next, I lived elsewhere and the tree received some amount of sunlight but it wasn't directly next to a window. In the final year, I put the tree next to my patio door and it received a LOT of sunlight. It seems like the rate the tree yellowed was related to the amount of sunlight it received each holiday season.

Let me preface this by saying the picture quality below is really, really bad. Unfortunately, they're all I've got with me! I should also say that I know I'm slightly late to the party. We started dismantling yesterday and I couldn't bear the thought of taking everything down w/o getting some pics first. We actually had two trees, one real and one artificial. The real tree was so dried out by yesterday it was...well, let's just say it wasn't ready for it's close up. Anyway... Here's the street-facing artificial tree (as you can see we can't fit a star/angel/ribbon on top). At first I was upset about that, but the starlessness has kind of grown on me. And here's a gratuitous shot of my favorite flowers in the world - tulips. I was absolutely delighted to see them back in the grocery store right before we hosted our family Christmas Party on the day after Christmas. So, I splurged and paid supermarket prices for them - and they were worth it! This is the flower arrangement a very sweet friend of the family brought me. I love it. I've been in denial about getting rid of it because it's so damn pretty. And a close up of our mantel. Pretty self explanatory. Thanks for indulging me :)