Double click on photos to see trees close up!

This is our front room tree and we basically decorate it the same very year--the kids insist on it. (However, this year, T's green ornaments aren't on the tree because he wasn't interested in helping.) L and J helped quite a bit to decorate but eventually tired out. I finished. This tree is time-consuming to decorate because it is loaded with ornaments, picks, and other babbles--just the way I like a tree.

Thank heavens it is a pre-lit tree. Although we had the "100 strands of lights with 50 lights per strand" tree for two years and it was beautiful, I wouldn't do that again for love nor money. (It stayed up the whole year which is why we had the lights for two years! We didn't use the front room back then.)

Bryan's contribution is the cute train that runs around the bottom of the tree.

I think we have had these particular decorations for the front room tree for about nine or ten years and this the first year that I haven't purchased something to put on the tree to try to tweak the look of it. I'm not sure this photograph does the tree justice.

I usually put my wooden German ornaments on my front hall tree but I did not put them up last year or this year because I did not want the puppy to chew up any of those ornaments. We did not even put up this tree last year. This year, I decided that we would put up the tree but decorate it with things that I wouldn't worry about or that wouldn't entice the puppy. L jumped into the design project and later J joined us. We decided the ornaments had to be red or white, and then we searched through my stash selecting just the right things--white birds, red birds, crocheted snow flakes, red hearts, blown glass ornaments, little plate ornaments, and lots of others. Bryan and I bought the glass tree topper on our honeymoon and we haven't used it since we lived in St. George. I thought the tree turned out great. In fact, I have had the little white and red plate ornaments for years and this is the first year I used them. Yea!

As it turned out, the dog left the ornaments alone, but the cat did snatch one of the low-lying birds from the tree and was making her get-away when she was caught. I did buy some silvery glass picks that look great on the tree. I also used some red and white glittery picks I'd bought two years ago for the German tree but they'd clashed with the other reds, so it was great to use those since they're pretty.

For the past few years, when ever the after-Christmas sales start, I have wondered whether to get another tree or two because I have enough ornaments to decorate them or I think I'll start a completely new set of decorations! Every year, I want to do something different with the trees I have--I have some kind of primal creative Christmas tree decorating urge. The kids always veto messing with the front room tree (which is why I HAD to get the hall tree for my German ornaments) but the hall tree looked so good this year, I may need another tree for my German ornaments! :-)

And then here is our front room tree made interesting with photo shop witchery! I couldn't resist--its that decorating thing again!