tree adventure

so, yes, it's been a while since i've blogged, but here's a fun story that happened over the holidays that i failed to put up in a timely manner!:

My favorite holiday memory actually happened just this year! I know that sounds weird, but it will be a memory that I look back on fondly for years and years to come! My husband and wanted to get our first Christmas tree together this year, but didn’t really have the funds to buy one. There are TONS of Christmas tree farms in the mountains of North Carolina, and tourists come from all over to pick out their Christmas trees. Jason and I got word of an old abandoned Christmas tree farm nearby where we could cut our own tree for free. YAY! We drove to the location in his 1984 Ford truck, which is always an adventure in itself, with a $6 handsaw we’d just bought at the hardware store. It had snowed about 3 inches the day before, so took a hike through the woods toward the farm, and all the Christmas trees were snow capped and beautiful – it was so picturesque! The trees on this farm were MONSTER sized trees, they were definitely over-grown and unshaped. I’m not sure that many of them would fit inside a normal house, it was hilarious! We trekked through the old farm looking for “our tree.” Aside from the large trees, there were also several beautiful trees, but once you came up close to them, we realized they were actually 3 or 4 small trees grown closely together. That wouldn’t work. We finally found some trees that had no branches on the bottom of their trunks. From about 7 feet and below, the branches had been sawed off. We looked into the air and guessed at what tree would look the best in our house! We sawed down our tree, shook off the snow and hauled it back through the woods to the truck. It hung out the back of the truck bed, flopping around the whole way home. We got our tree onto the porch and realized we had a 13 foot Christmas tree!! We sawed off enough to fit it in the house and placed it in our living room. I’m not sure words could describe what our tree looks like. Maybe comparing it to Charlie Brown’s tree would be a start. It’s not full and beautiful, the branches are thin and you can see the trunk from all angles, and overall it’s just sort of… awkward. But it’s our first Christmas tree! There was no hot chocolate stand at that abandoned Christmas tree farm, no free candy canes for the customers, and no tractor pulled hayrides available, but it was still a memorable experience, and my new favorite Christmas memory!

well, i couldn't post without showing how ugly the tree was! pic attached! :-)

p.s.- please note yuengling, our little garden elf gaurding our tree!