Sucking up the Christmas Cheer- A "Tinsel"lating Tale

I have always wanted to have a real Christmas tree. My mom, on the other hand, always said they were a pain and a big mess, and I thought that was a rather Grinchy idea, and I decided that when I had a home of my own, I would have a real Christmas tree. I have also always loved tinsel. My mom let us put those tinsel "icecicles" on our tree one year, but she never let us do it again. This also seemed rather grinchy to me, so this year, I asked Arthur if we could have a real tree, and I went to Wal-Mart and bought a nice big package of tinsel. Saturday afternoon, after he finished duck hunting (they brought back 16 ducks), Arthur took me to a Christmas tree farm to pick out a tree. It was great! There was a Santa guy there (that Ho-ho guy, as my cousin's little boy used to say) who told kids to be good because Jesus wanted them to love everyone and be nice to people. There was also FREE hot chocolate! I could NEVER pass up free hot chocolate! Anyways, we found the perfect tree, and Arthur sawed it down.
Here is Arthur posing with the tree. He is making sure everyone sees how I am torturing him by dragging him there :-)
Here I am with our tree. My wonderful hubby sawing down our tree.
We invited Bob, Shar, Elise, and Bob and Shar's two foster kids over to help decorate the tree. Well, the guys watched the football game, and the rest of us decorated. They had a great time. There were a few branches that were a bit weighed down with ornaments, but overall, they did a good job of spreading them out. Also, I don't have a tree topper yet, so we put a little teddy bear on top for now. I ended up getting some more of that snowflake garland too, so it looks a little better now than it did in the pictures. Arthur popped some popcorn, and Shar brought oreos, so we had some great snack food. The kids, especially boy B., loved the popcorn popper! Shar, Elise, and I played some Candy Land with the kiddos. They were sad when it was time to go home (maybe just because they knew it would be bedtime when they got there), but we did all have a good time!
What I discovered while decorating is that tinsel is a very messy thing, which is probably why my mom wasn't that into tinsel, but it is a wonderful little bit of Christmas cheer, and I love seeing it on my tree, so I was not concerned about the mess. (I would recommend to anyone contemplating using tinsel on their tree that you do NOT wear a nice staticky sweater. My nice staticky sweater made sure I was nice and tinsely)! Between wrestling the tree into the house and into the tree stand and all the decorating, there was a LOT of stuff on my carpet. However, I had the utmost confidence that my vacuum cleaner could handle it. My Bissell vaccuum cleaner will pick up anything, and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting a good vaccuum for a reasonable price. So, I whipped it out and proceeded to clean! It did a great job of picking up the tinsel and pine needles. However, when I swept under the tree, it did a great job of sucking all of the tinsel off of the lower branches as well! It looked very interesting with loads of tinsel on the higher branches and none at all on the lower couple of layers of branches. I searched around the house for loose tinsel on the floor (it did not contain itself to the living room... it roamed freely around the house as if it were all open range) and swiped some from the back of the tree to balance it back out a bit. I guess I should wait until we take the tree down after Christmas to vaccuum directly under the tree, or I will run out of my bits of Christmas cheer before I even finish buying all of the presents! Maybe my mom was not Grinchy, just a bit more practical than my romanticized ideas of Christmas allow me to be. :-) Even with the mess though, I think I will always love tinsel. I might have gotten carried away playing with the different effects on my camera, but I think you can see the tinsel better on the sepia picture.
I also finished my stockings! Yey! I think they turned out really cute. I bought some cross-stitch tread and plan on sewing our names onto them. I do not cross-stitch, but I like stitching the names with that thread as opposed to the single strand embroidery thread. They were really easy to make. I love iron on paper! I just cut the shapes out of felt and ironed them onto the fabric. The actual stocking fabric is felt also, but I got it off of a large bolt, whereas the decorations are cut from smaller squares of felt from the craft section. I stitched the two sides of the stockings together with a long running stitch using cross stitching thread. I stitched two ribbons together for the border at the top and ironed it around the top border of the stocking. I folded over a small piece of ribbon and tacked it down to the inside corner of the stockings and voila! Today, Shar and I made about 200 sugar cookies. That was fun. She is taking them to her teen Bible club tonight. They will get to decorate them and package them to deliver to people in the community. I may have to stop by during kids' club and take a few pictures. In case you're curious, it takes 15 cups of flour and 6 sticks of margarine to make that many cookies. :-) It also takes 3 cups of powdered sugar and about 4 cups of granulated sugar. That ought to spread some Christmas cheer, even without the tinsel!