a tree ... finally!

And finally, finally, we too are the proud owners of a TREE ! Only not that one.

For the last few days we have had the pleasure of this little chap who, it must be said, looks a lot cuter than his photo would suggest ..

Only now we are in the countryside are we finally able to get fully into Christmas mode. Driving out of London yesterday turned out to be a breeze; quiet roads and beautiful blue skies, albeit a freezing cold start - literally. The pavement outside our house was no less than treacherous, making loading up the car an interesting task I can tell you. In fact I very nearly did a double lutz (or "klutz" as my hubby would tell me) at one stage whilst wielding a particularly delicate piece! Fortunately, though, the roads were nowhere near as bad and once we got out of London, well the temperature welcoming us into Dorset was positively tropical - 4.5 degrees.

This morning, we set off in search of the one. The children had already made it clear they wanted small - for some reason they are both into small things. Granted they are fairly small themselves, even for their ages, but there's starting to be a running theme - "Mu-um, please can we have a baby?". "Err, no-ooooo!". Anyway, it's just as well the consensus is small in this case, since hubby is in 30 degree Singapore until tomorrow and is clearly out of the running to lug around/saw the end of the trunk/set it in its stand/put the lights on it. Oh no, have I really got to do all that? As for getting the thing in the car in the first place, along with two children ... but it's going to be a small one, it's going to be fine, it's going to be alright ...

Of course by the time we got to the farm it was raining and the Christmas trees were beginning to get damp, which kept us well away from too much dithering. The tree we chose isn't a perfect beauty but will do us proud for the fortnight we'll have it sharing our home and actually, looking at it now, it is quite sweet in a not a lot of choice kind of way.

As is tradition in our household, the tree is decorated solely by the children (apart from the lights, that is). Granted someone has to be lifted up once in a while, particularly since they're not allowed to stand on the back of the sofa for fear of falling into the tree (Health & Safety and all that). But aside from that, their role is taken very seriously.

Daughter's favourite bauble as it was bought for her first Christmas back in 2003

Son's favourite for obvious reasons

This is my favourite - I bought quite a number of wooden decorations from a German shop in Penzance years ago. Sadly it's no longer there

Can't seem to get enough of birds on the tree

One of several different types of garland

And it wouldn't be the same without these two ..

So, as seems to be the tradition here in Blogland, would you care to see our tree?

By the way, it's not actually that small, in fact we had to chop a bit off the top before we could stand it up in the house!

The excitement levels are getting fairly high here so I do hope you're enjoying the final countdown too?