Have You Ever Tried To De-Light A Pre-Lit Artificial Christmas Tree?

.....then you know how much it absolutely SUCKS! I sent out an APB for an artificial Christmas tree through the Freecycle network and got a hit. I met the woman at the local grocery store and hauled home a beautiful fake tree. The day before, Nathaniel and I decided to take Geof way out into the woods to get a real tree. Actually we went way out in the boonies and tree hunted from the car. We found the perfect little Charlie Brown tree, chopped it down, stuffed it in the trunk, and put it in a big three legged cast iron pot when we got home. I do believe that this is my most favorite Christmas tree ever. I wish I could post a picture of it. It's very rustic and primitive looking. It's fairly small so I only decorated it with lights and our hand-me-down ornaments. It's perfect. I think I really like it because of what it represents...Love & Family. Yeah, I know that sounds corny but it really means a lot to me considering the few rough patches we've had as of late. It was a really great weekend.

So why am I blogging about this on here instead of my other blog? I'm getting there, hold your horses! I had decided that I wanted a fake tree this year...no fuss, no mess. Then Nathaniel came up with the idea for the tree we ended up getting. This was after I had already been on the lookout via Freecycle for a fake one. Well, yesterday I hauled it out of the trunk and set it up and it was freaking huge. I'm guessing 6' tall, but it was really big around. I had planned on maybe putting it up in Geof's room, but there was no way it would fit in there. First plan of action was to take all the lights off the tree. Ugh! Like the title of this post suggests, it was a prelit tree. That means that every 2.5 -3 inches the lights are clipped to every single little branch with a clip shaped like this...

...ok, so they didn't have evil eyes or big sharp teeth, but you get the idea. They weren't designed to be taken off too easily. So, skip ahead about 2.5 hours later and all the lights were off the tree. By then I was tired of looking at that damn tree so I decided that it was not going in my house. I've been wanting some garland to go outside along the porch railing. So, I began to de-branch the pre-branched tree. That went very smoothly, surprisingly. Then I tied all the branches together with wire, hung it up, put lights on it, and viola the Christmas Fairy puked all over my house and I was finally at peace. I was even able to wire the top of the fake tree to the stand at the bottom and now I have a miniature tree on the porch. Sometimes, my genius amazes me...Ha!!! And so that is why I blogged about all that here...on my crafty blog......hey, I do have a crafting life outside of crochet.

Other Christmas craftiness. I've been on a Christmas-Crafting-With-The-Kid lately and here are a few things we're planning to do leading up to Christmas...
Santa Calendar
Dough Ornaments

Reindeer Ornament
Snowflakes
I've also been crocheting some snowflakes for my wreath outside. I'm addicted too!! They're quick and the patterns I've found online have been easy to follow. 2 snowflakes down and only 12 to go!! That's all for now...take care and happy holiday crafting!!